Those Russian players were supposed to be an amateur team comprised of Red Army Officers.
When Igor Larionov was with the Sharks, someone asked him if he was ever really in the Red Army. He said something like “well, technically I was a Major in the Army, but I didn’t even know how to put the uniform on correctly.”
When my ex was looking for a place to buy, Larionov was playing for the Sharks. There happened to be a “fluff piece” in the San Jose Mercury-News about Igor and his wife, where he mentioned that his wife insisted they buy their house in Sunnyvale because it was the safest town around in an earthquake.
This influenced my ex to focus her real estate agent on Sunnyvale, where she bought a town house that I also moved in to. So, in a way, Larionov’s wife influenced where I ended up living for two years.
I lived there 25 years ago, and still miss the place. However, if you tried to start out there from scratch right now, you would need to be pulling down at least 200 grand a year just to afford a halfway decent place.