From Russia, With Love Chiefs Left Wing Appreciates All That States Have To Offer

Dmitri Leonov comes out of the locker room dragging two hockey sticks, unwilling to leave them behind as if equipment is gold.

It is, or was.

Leonov grew up in Chelyabinsk, Russia, under stark conditions.

“Here you have everything,” the Spokane Chiefs’ 20-year-old left wing said as he prepared for tonight’s 7 o’clock Western Hockey League game with the Prince George Cougars.

“In Russia after work you (are) supposed to stand in long line for a piece of bread or something. Here is much, much better, hockey and everything.”

Leonov - on a scoring tear - stays with Max and LuAnn Lunt of Spokane, who after three years, speak of him as family.

“Dima (short for Dmitri) says he has a good friend back home, a goalie who plays with Tractor, his old team,” Lunt said. “This guy has had the same goalie’s catcher’s mitt for four or five years. Every game it falls apart. Every night he sews it back up.”

Leonov speaks of a deep appreciation for things American.

“In Russia I buy my tape, my practice socks, my skates,” he said. “If your equipment is broken you can’t change because we don’t have a lot of stuff, so you fix your equipment yourself.

“They give you stick and say, ‘This stick is like for two weeks. If you break it …”’

Replace it.

Leonov grew up within blocks of former Chief Maxim Bets, who preceded him to Spokane. Bets, now with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks’ farm club in Baltimore, the Baltimore Bandits, is still trying to get the hang of the North American game - the tougher, aggressive, two-way play that Leonov has embraced.

Canadian coaches often have a tough time dealing with European styles and attitudes.

Bets, for example, was described here in off-the-record whispers as lazy and selfish.

Leonov - who played for Bets’ father and still counts Maxim as a close friend - is uniformly praised.

“Before we drafted him we talked a lot to Max about him,” Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz said. “Maxim said he played hard, was a good kid, that type of thing. Some of the things Max said you had to think about. We had to wonder if he was handing us a bill of goods.”

Bets was handing Speltz a gem of an import draft pick.

“Night in and night out Dmitri can be classified as our hardest worker,” Speltz said.

Leonov says, “Russian hockey more technically. Here it’s more physical. If you want to play here you play physical.”

A broken ankle in the third game last season cost Leonov a month, plus the momentum that’s taking shape now.

He’s playing for a contract, and more.

He’s playing for a lifestyle.

After this it’s turn pro or turn back.

The prospect of going home isn’t an impending sentence. He would have his family and freedoms that have taken root that didn’t exist in his infancy.

But given a choice, Leonov stays in the West, and there’s no assurance of that at this point.

“I’m certainly no expert in immigration law,” Speltz said, “but if he doesn’t play hockey it’ll be difficult for him (to stay in the U.S. or Canada).”

Leonov smiles at the locker room humor that eases such produce-or-else pressure.

“They say next year if I don’t play hard I play in Russia, for KGB,” he says.

His linemate, right wing Jay Bertsch, said he got in the habit of correcting Leonov’s English.

“He’d forget a noun or something and I’d correct him,” Bertsch said. “It got to where everything he said, I’d correct. It was a joke but it got frustrating for him. He’s just about fluent now, not like he was when I came here two years ago.”

Leonov laughs a soft, self-conscious chuckle.

“I’d say, You have a steak? Bertsch would say, ‘No, no, DO you have a steak?’ It was a joke but still it kind of helped me learn.”

He remembers in his rookie year getting lost in instruction. When former Chiefs coach Bryan Maxwell - in his characteristic baritone growl - would order up a drill in practice, Leonov would start copying.

“First year, when Maxy tried to explain, I was like lost. Beeg time,” Leonov said. “In a drill, I would think, Oh my God, what now? I go back in the line and wait for somebody to do something.”

He was reminded on his return home last summer how far he’s come.

“They called me from Red Army,” said Leonov. “Tim Speltz gave me contract (a document showing that he’s playing in this country, with a chance to advance).

“Without that, they can take me,” Leonov said.

Russian males are draft-eligible until 27, he said.

Leonov will play somewhere next year. The mystery is where.

Suddenly and quietly unstoppable, Leonov says, “I don’t want to quit hockey so maybe (if he doesn’t sign with a pro organization this season) I’ll try with a farm team in this country, or play somewhere in Europe.”

When Leonov, nervous and uncomfortable, was introduced to the Lunts three years ago, he was shown around the house.

“He didn’t say a word,” Lunt recalled. “Nothing, not even hello. He said his first word to us in the garage.”

“Porsche!”

“I have an old one stored in the garage,” said Lunt, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. “He wanted an 8-by-10 picture of him sitting in a Porsche, to send back to Russia.”

Who there would believe that his adopted family had so much to show for their lives?

Before the tour was over Leonov noticed cases of canned goods stored on shelves in the pantry and broke into his first sentence.

“If my mother see this,” he said, “she faint.”

He learned English “in a school for six years but you can understand better than you can speak,” Leonov said. “Your accent - people not understand you. So you try to explain.

“The first year (‘93-94) wasn’t really tough because Bets and Bure were here. I would just ask Bets, ‘What they say?’ He translated. I actually learned English last year, after they were gone.”

His adopted language has sunk in.

He finds himself hoping in a foreign language.

“When I was back home for summer,” he said, “my mom say, you speak English in your dream.”

Why not? To him, that’s how a dream is best expressed.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos