Team Profile:Moscow Spartak

GM: Michael Banker (2nd GM in team’s history)

Coach: Joel Quenneville (formerly Glen Gulutzan)

Last season: 4th overall, EURO Cup champions

Ins and Outs

(Season 3 to Season 4)

Out: Chris Higgins (free agent, Frankfurt), Derek Roy (FA, Milan), Alexei Ponikarovsky (FA, Edinburgh)

In: Vincent Lecavalier (free agent, from Frankfurt), Nate Thompson (FA, Berlin), Bryan Bickell (FA, Munich), Nikolaj Ehlers (draft), Travis Sanheim (draft)

In Place

(Key players signed past Season 4)

Anze Kopitar, C; Andrew Ladd, LW; Dustin Brown, RW; Duncan Keith, D; Jaroslav Halak, G

Three Questions

1. Are they going to repeat as champions? An old Russian proverb goes “He who doubts the Banker Effect will be left saying ‘I guess I shouldn’t have doubted the Banker Effect.'” The current king of Websim hockey took over an 18th-place team and transformed it into a scary foe almost overnight. In the back, this year’s team looks the same as last year’s did, which is not to say anyone’s staring at Moscow’s derriere. Jaroslav Halak is back in goal and still in his prime, and the solid-as-a-rock top four defensemen also return. But the veteran team is a year slower and Banker is faced with the problem of replacing two forwards who contributed a lot to the Cup run last year. Derek Roy takes some criticism for his style of play sometimes, but he produced 54 points in Moscow last year before bolting to Milan. Banker seems to have replaced him very well by adding veteran Vinny Lecavalier, a 50-point man last season in Frankfurt and a great leader in the dressing room. But Chris Higgins will be extremely tough to replace. Very versatile, Higgins was able to skate on the top line (64 points) and on the checking line and penalty kill with Brandon Sutter. Spartak could very well repeat as champs, for as they say, with Banker, all things are possible. But if they take a lot of ill-timed penalties, their one weakness (see below) might do them in.

2. What’s their weakness? An exquisitely balanced club, Moscow ranked in the top 6 or 7 in almost every team stats category last season. Only penalty killing lagged. Moscow ranked 19th in the league at 80.4 percent. Fortunately, their penalty killers weren’t called upon that often. Only Geneva and Dublin took fewer penalties in Season 4 than Spartak did. The loss of Higgins will make improving the penalty kill an uphill task. And strangely, coaching the shorthanded units was supposedly coach Glen Gulutzan’s strongest attribute. He is gone this season and Joel Quenneville has taken his place. Quenneville’s worst attribute by far? Yep. Coaching the penalty kill.

3. Who are the unsung heroes of Moscow? Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer who, upon taking a split second decision, prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis from escalating into a nuclear war. But he’s dead now. Spartak’s third line of Alexei Kalyuzhny, Benoit Pouliot and Jannik Hansen was plus 10-12 last year, making it the most effective line on the team if you only went by pluses and minuses. But on a team with Kopitar, Keith, Ladd, etc., Brandon Sutter should get more praise. He played only 15 minutes per game last season and he finished sixth on the squad in assists and shots on goal. Offense isn’t even his strong suit; defense is. Sutter was second to Kopitar in takeaways and among Moscow forwards, he was second in blocked shots, and first in hits and plus/minus. Sutter is slated to center Spartak’s second line with Aleksey Morozov on his right and newly acquired Kris Versteeg on his left.