Did You Know the Pittsburgh Penguins Owned a Russian Hockey Team?

The actual 1993-94 Russian Penguins squad.

Did you know this hockey team was half Russian, half American?

Owned by the actual Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Red Army, falling apart

After the USSR collapsed, Russia's most feared hockey program was falling apart. The Red Army — CSKA Moscow, the club that built the Soviet national team for four decades — had lost its biggest stars to the NHL and dropped to 23rd out of 24 teams. Some nights, only a few hundred fans showed up to watch a program that used to sell out arenas and terrorize Canada Cup rosters.

So in 1993, Pittsburgh's ownership group — Mario Lemieux included — bought the entire Red Army club. They rebranded it. The Red Army became the Russian Penguins.

A logo that used to be a hammer and sickle

The old CSKA crest carried the weight of Soviet military sport. The new one was a cartoon penguin in hockey gear, set against a star. Participants who were there remember the first sketch getting laughed out of the room — the beak looked too much like a Soviet general — before it got softened into something a kid could wear.

Underneath the mascot, the DNA didn't change. This was still the Red Army program. Same ice. Same red and white. Just a Pittsburgh-built show wrapped around it — sponsor giveaways, music, an actual mascot, a fan experience Moscow hockey had never seen.

CSKA's own club history says attendance grew to roughly five times what Moscow rivals Dynamo and Spartak were drawing, with derbies selling out. American organizers remember crowds going from a few hundred people to filling the building.

Viktor Tikhonov — the legendary, notoriously old-school Soviet coach — reportedly thought cheering after goals was rude. By the end, the building was chanting his name.

14 games. 25 days. Zero rest.

In February 1994, the Russian Penguins did the part of this story that sounds made up: they crossed North America and played a real, standings-counting game against every single team in the old International Hockey League — 13 games in the box score, 14 total with an exhibition stop in Cleveland, all inside 25 days.

One night: a 10-1 loss. The next: a 6-4 win. That's how the whole tour went.

On February 15, 1994, the Russian Penguins got beaten 10-1 in Phoenix. Roadrunners fans watched a young, jet-lagged Russian roster get run out of the building. Twenty-four hours later, in Salt Lake City, that same team beat the Golden Eagles 6-4. No load management. No reset button. Just a bus, an overnight drive, and a hockey team that showed up anyway.

Two guys on a 2-9-2 team went on to win 4 Stanley Cups

Final record: 2 wins, 9 losses, 2 overtime losses. Nobody who tells this story leads with the record.

Nikolai Khabibulin was in the crease for most of that brutal tour — a teenager getting shelled by minor-league snipers game after game. Ten years later, he backstopped Tampa Bay to a Stanley Cup, becoming the first Russian goaltender to win it as the starting goalie.

Sergei Brylin played 13 games on the tour — 4 goals, 5 assists. The New Jersey Devils liked what they saw enough to bring him to camp later that year. He spent his entire 13-season NHL career in New Jersey and became one of only five players to win all three of the franchise's Stanley Cups, in 1995, 2000, and 2003.

Hockey is weird.

The scoreboard forgot them. Pittsburgh and Moscow never did.

Bench Clearers Fanwear exists to dig up the stories hockey forgot — the defunct teams, the strange experiments, the rosters full of players nobody was scouting yet. The Russian Penguins are the wildest one we've found. A collapsed superpower's flagship hockey club, rescued by Pittsburgh's ownership group, wearing a cartoon logo, chanting a Soviet coach's name, producing future Stanley Cup champions along the way.

You don't need to know anything about 1990s Russian hockey to understand this story. You just need to know it's true.

Wear the history that got left out of the books.

Retro Revival collection live now. This gear is always full price — heritage, not a markdown.