Three-time world champion, eight-time USSR champion and ’72 Summit Series veteran Vyacheslav Anisin spent the twilight years of his career in Europe, including a spell in Yugoslavia playing for Medvescak of Zagreb, who last week became the latest team to join the KHL. The club’s full name, KHL Medvescak Zagreb, hints that it was destined to be in the League one day, although the ‘KHL’ denotes Klub Hokeja na Ledu, or ice hockey club, and for most of the Yugoslav Ice Hockey League’s 50-year history the Bears from the Croatian capital found it hard to make an impact during decades of dominance by the Slovene clubs, Acroni Jesenice and Olimpija Ljubljana, and Partizan of Belgrade. That all changed after Anisin arrived, and in 1989 Medvescak won the championship for the very first time, thanks in no small part to an explosive season (33+22 in 31 games) from the Soviet forward.
“The level was not very high, of course,” Anisin recalls, "but we had quite a strong team. We played at a stadium which formed part of the complex where Dinamo Zagreb football club was based. The team was financed by a company, Gorton, and singer-songwriter Ivica Šerfezi, who was quite famous in those days. The head coach was our own Anatoly Kostryukov. I must say that the preseason training was as arduous as it was back in the USSR, but no-one complained; the players were real professionals. I played in a line alongside Viktor Krutov and Slovenia’s Igor Beribak, who was in no way out of his depth in our troika. The stadium was packed for every game and you just can’t describe the atmosphere during the play-offs, so imagine the scenes when we became champions of Yugoslavia for the first time in thirty-odd years. In the main, hockey has been popular in Croatia for many years.
“The national team has never achieved any outstanding results. Croatia recently won promotion from the IIHF Division 2 Group B, and even though the deciding game was against Serbia in Zagreb it only drew a little over 3,000 spectators, and yet at club level, Medvescak games regularly fill the 15,000-seater arena.
“Croatia is yet to produce any great players, but perhaps this will change in the future. They have just managed to take a big step up in class, and for now they must rely on North Americans. I was at the friendly game between Medvescak and Dynamo Moscow in 2011, and Medvescak found it really tough with a team comprising mostly Croats, so for the KHL they will practically have a brand new roster. As for how the team will look compared with the others in the KHL, we can only guess.
“One thing they won’t have to worry about is attracting big crowds. Football is not the only popular sport in Croatia - they love all kinds, and that includes hockey.”