EuroVision: Backstrom wears No. 99 in KHL

EuroVision: Highlights, notes, tweets and photos from across the pond – where the lockout doesn’t quite translate

You know that guy in your beer league who has the nerve or flat-out lack of reverence to wear number 99 on the back of his sweater?

You should. He’s the guy who gets rubbed out a little harder along the boards and chirped a little louder from the opposing bench.

Nicklas Backstrom is that guy.

On Monday, the Washington Capitals forward made his KHL debut for Dynamo Moscow, his back draped in the sport’s most significant double digit. Backstrom started with the club’s top line alongside Caps teammate Alex Ovechkin (who wears 32 in the KHL instead of his NHL 8) and Richard Gynge, reports Pavel Lysenkov.

The Capitals forwards faced a Lokomotiv club backstopped by former Washington netminder Semyon Varlamov (now of the Colorado Avalanche).

Though in most pro (and beer) leagues it’s perfectly within the rules, like, say, inking another team’s RFA to an aggressive offer sheet, wearing number 99 on your hockey jersey when your name isn’t Wayne Gretzky is just something that isn’t done too often. At least in North America.

In the National Hockey League, however, it’s not just an unwritten rule; it’s a written one. Gretzky’s double-niner is the only number retired league-wide. Hockey’s equivalent of Major League Baseball’s No. 42 came into effect, fittingly, in 1999, upon the Great One’s retirement.

But there is no NHL hockey right now, and Backstrom is an ocean away from its rules and mythology. Could this be seen as another shot across the pond at the stagnant NHL?

Backstrom wears No. 19 in Washington, but both 19 and its inverse, No. 91, are taken on Dynamo. Lysenkov reports that Backstrom is just the second player in KHL history to wear 99, the other being Lokomotiv Yaroslavl’s Alwexander Guskov, a veteran Russian defenceman with no North American experience.

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    In Russia, they called Pavel Datsyuk’s fourth of the KHL season an “incredible goal!”

    In Detroit, they call it typical Datsyuk:

    In other “Detroit Red Wings Killing It Overseas” news, Henrik Zetterberg scored a hat trick in his second Swiss league contest (plus an assist) and could have easily had a hat trick in his debut Friday, settling for two goals and an assist instead:

    Szemberg also reports that Zetterberg’s Zug club is trying to lure Swiss-born Jonas Hiller over because both of the team’s goaltenders are hurt.

    Alex Semin made his KHL debut for the Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo on Friday. His new team defeated Avtomobilist 5-3, but Semin was a minus-1 and held pointless:

    More key departures:

    Minnesota Wild point machine Mikko Koivu has inked a deal with TPS Turku (Finnish Elite League).

    Winnipeg Jets defenceman Tobias Enstrom is set to join EC Red Bull Salzburg (Austria’s EBEL).

    Surely you saw Ovechkin’s head shatter the glass, but did you see his snipe right off the face-off?
    Please, don’t act like you’d be happy for him to stay in Russia when the NHL returns.

    And one update for the hockey super-nerds:

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