People think, sports delivers a message. It's not just about winning and losing, although that's important. It's about other things, too. It demonstrates how it can say certain things about your culture and your society.

Anatoli Tarasov, the guy that created the Soviet style of play, was a visionary. He was a creative thinker. He studied ballet and chess and art and read a lot.

I don't want to get into being too hockey centered, but I just felt like the late 70's and 80's into the 90's was the right time period to tell the story.

Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.

What I found interesting about Slava Fetisov was that he went through three different generations of Soviet hockey. In the late 70's, he experienced the Miracle on Ice, and then in the 80's became with his teammates the Russian Five, the most dominant team in the history of hockey, and then helped bring down the hockey system when the Soviet Union collapsed and became one of the first players to play in the NHL, and then ultimately came back to Russia.

There (in the Soviet Union) it was a science. In order to be a coach, you had to study in school.

I've had a lot of coaches in my life, but I've only had a few very good ones. So, I try to take from the best ones and apply those to what I do and think and with anyone I work with in terms of how to motivate people and work with them.