Russia Is Luring Back N.H.L. Stars

“Less and less players are going to the N.H.L. and more and more are coming back here,” Yashin said in an interview in English after the game. “From my perspective, there is a competition between Russian clubs and the N.H.L. for the best product on the ice.”

Yashin’s N.H.L. experience had soured when the Islanders bought out the final four years of his contract in June, handing him $17.63 million. Whether motivated by enmity toward the N.H.L. because of his stormy final years there, or a sense of Russian pride, Yashin joined a growing movement among Russian players, government officials and business leaders. They are seeking to reclaim a sport viewed here as a national tradition that has been crippled, many say, by the pilfering of hockey stars over the last decade and a half by the N.H.L.

Now, say these hockey patriots, it is Russia’s turn to have the best. The country’s professional league expects to catch and surpass the N.H.L. as the world’s premier hockey league. To do that, it must keep its best homegrown talent at home — or lure it back home.

Yashin, 34, left Russia for North America shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a hockey superpower for decades that was bleeding talent profusely. The sport had all but disintegrated there by the early 1990s as the empire that spawned one of the most successful sporting industries in the world melted into decrepitude. Most hockey players of international merit left Russian clubs, which began to fester in an atmosphere of poverty, gangsterism and occasional violence.

Today’s stratospheric energy prices have helped return a semblance of Russia’s former pre-eminence, and large state companies like the natural gas behemoth Gazprom, the state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport and others with hockey fans and former players on their boards have started pumping money into Russia’s professional hockey league, the Superliga. They are luring back players from leagues abroad, while persuading others to remain with the teams that groomed them from childhood.

Lokomotiv now boasts increasing profits from ticket sales and advertising and has financial backing from the Russian Railroads, a large, wealthy state company. The team’s modern arena, equipped with luxury boxes, a rinkside restaurant and its own microbrewery, offsets Yaroslavl’s centuries-old monastery and crumbling Soviet apartment blocs.

“Sooner or later, the National Hockey League is going to have to reckon with our league, because, despite everything, we are getting stronger, not only in terms of players but in terms of our legal and financial protections,” Yuri Yakovlev, Lokomotiv’s president, said in an interview in Russian.

At the recent game, Yashin scored the final goal of a 4-1 Lokomotiv victory over Moscow’s TsSKA, as a raucous crowd, under the influence of stadium-brewed beer, heckled and hollered at every cheap shot, glove save and goal.

“Games are becoming more and more enjoyable,” Yashin said after the game, adding that fans had become more numerous and impassioned as the country’s economic troubles had dimmed and money had appeared for little luxuries like a Friday night hockey game.

“It’s great,” he said. “It shows that the country is going in the right direction.”

For those vested in its promotion, Russian hockey is not just a commercial endeavor, but also a point of national pride, tinged with competitive animosity for the bigger, more profitable N.H.L.

“Hockey is a Russian sport — though Canadians think it’s theirs,” Sergei Naryshkin, a deputy prime minister and a major hockey promoter, said at a lavish hockey benefit party in Moscow recently. “It is not just a sport, but a part of our great history, our national consciousness, and a part of our pride.”