This season's Winter Classic at Fenway Park in Boston will be between the home town Bruins against Philadelphia Flyers on New Year's Day 2010. This information became official last Wednesday in an NHL press meeting at the famous baseball arena. This will be the third Winter Classic after starting on January 1, 2008, at the Ralph Wilson Stadium in New York between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres in front of a record crowd of 71,217 spectators (see photo above). The obvious success of this match resulted in a follow-up a year later between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Redwings at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Note that the winners of the previous two Winter Classics, Pittsburgh and Detroit, have also lost in the final of the Stanley Cup the same year.

News came through last week that Russian team Khimik Voskresensk, nursery team of some of the greatest stars to come out of the east in recent years, was finally put to sleep in bankruptcy. Names like Larionov, Kozlov, Kamensky, Ragulin, Kvartalnov and Markov all started their careers playing for this village team outside Moscow. Now a huge suburb to Moscow, Voskresensk has finished playing its part in the world of ice hockey.

Still in Russia, only 6 were picked in this year's NHL draft but next year could be different. NHL's European scouts have released a list of the best players available ahead of the 2010 drafts and Russian players take the top three places. Finland has two players high on the list while this year's winners, Sweden, with seven players going in the first round this year, still have a number of youngsters worthy of an extra look. Outside of Russia, Finland and Sweden, the list is embarrassingly short, with German Tom Kuhnhackl and Swiss Nino Niederreiter at the top.