Photo: Nick Wass/AP
Dmitry Orlov of the Washington Capitals and Sergei Bobrovsky of the Columbus Blue Jackets held a charity hockey event on June 30, 2016, held at the Park Inn by Radisson in Novokuznetsk, Russia. (Both Dmitry and Sergei are natives of Novokuznetsk and both had played for the Metallurg Novokuznetsk hockey club before they came over to to the US to play in the NHL).
https://www.instagram.com/p/BHR2qP-AVgL/?taken-by=varvara__orlova
Pictured above are Dmitry and Sergei and their wives, Varvara and Olga, the evening of the event.
The purpose of this event was to help raise money for children’s hockey. Netminder Bobrovsky was inspired by his Columbus teammate, Scott Hartnell who had organized a similar event in North America that shared the same mission. Sergei wanted to bring a similar event to his hometown. He reached out to Dmitry to assist him with the event and they were also supported by Vladimir Rokkel, the General Director of Metallurg Novokuznetsk.
The event featured auctions of hockey jerseys and equipment (a photograph of donated hockey sticks is shown above). Equipment also included donations of jerseys and various equipment from players such as: Bobrovsky and Orlov themselves, and also from Artemy Panarin, Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Braden Holtby, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Pavel Datsyuk, to name a few.
The event was built up for at least a month and had a special logo as well as a promotional video. You can watch the promotional video below, however the audio is in Russian. As part of the effort to earn publicity for the event, one day Orlov and Bobrovsky pumped gas at one of the combination gas station/convenience stores in the area to help in marketing the event.
By Diane Doyle
Source Material:
Sports Express: http://www.sport-express.ru/hockey/khl/news/1017563/
Metallurg Website: http://www.metallurg-nk.ru/ (With interviews in Russia)
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