from Keith Gave at the Detroit Free Press,

This excerpt of the new book, released March 20, is the third installment in a five-part series leading up to the Freep Film Festival, which opens with the world premiere of the "Russian Five" documentary on April 11 at Fillmore Detroit.

Jim Devellano reached down on either side of his chair and grabbed two heavy duffel bags, tossing them onto the desk that separated him from his visitors — an anxious young Russian hockey player and an interpreter commissioned by the club. Devellano, the senior vice president of the Detroit Red Wings, had arranged for a clandestine meeting in the early hours of Christmas Eve, 1990, in his office in the bowels of Joe Louis Arena.

He was prepared to do anything he could to get Vladimir Konstantinov to walk away from his Russian teammates to join the Wings. If Devellano was successful, it would be the second defection of a prominent Soviet-born hockey player to Detroit.

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