One sultry summer night in Helsinki, Finland, Detroit sports journalist Keith Gave approached a pair of Soviet hockey players after an exhibition game. In the eyes of the KGB minders circling their charges, media guides were exchanged and nothing more. What no one knew at the time—and in fact, what no one would know for years—was that life-changing letters were tucked between the unassuming pages. A former Russian linguist for the National Security Agency, Gave spent several years eavesdropping on the Soviets at the height of the Cold War—apt training for a future journalist. Tasked with spilling secrets in both of his professions, Gave now had to prove that he could keep one.

In 1989, the Detroit Red Wings drafted two sparkling prospects out of Moscow, Sergei Fedorov and Vladimir Konstantinov, despite the near impossibility of negotiating their releases. Team leadership concocted an audacious plan to stage their defections, but the Red Wings required a Russian speaker to make contact with the players. Enter stage left: Keith Gave, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press with intensive Russian training from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. Despite his misgivings around the ethicality, Gave flew to Helsinki and talked his way into the Soviet locker room, successfully relaying the message that Detroit would breach the Iron Curtain for their draft picks. Within two years, the pair of budding superstars had escaped conscription for the spoils of the NHL—but Gave’s role as reluctant envoy was cloaked for decades.

Like most epic romances—from William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice —my relationship with Soviet hockey followed the enemies-to-lovers trope. When the Detroit Red Wings swept my Philadelphia Flyers in the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals, I cried myself into a nosebleed. Nearly eight and new to the Philadelphia birthright of sporting disaster, I crumpled as Detroit fans lined the streets with brooms to celebrate their sweep. Yes, the so-called Russian Five—a line of Soviet-born players acquired in a string of wild defections and clever trades—had vanquished my team, but why were they so hard to hate? What was it about their inch-perfect shots, their clairvoyant passes, those eyes that seemed exuberant and melancholy all at once, that etched themselves into my heart? It was kismet that Keith Gave set into motion. A childhood dream manifested in Moscow decades later when I dove head-first into the soul of Russian hockey, and it was Gave’s gentle guidance that led me to Mountainview–the program in which he authored The Russian Five.

I suppose you could say I have walked a path that Gave laid—wittingly or unwittingly—all my life, but now I have the privilege of walking it with him. “I saw that miracles were shocking, as overwhelming as disasters,” wrote Janet Fitch in The Revolution of Marina M, one of Gave’s favorite books. I consider his cherished mentorship to be a miracle of fate, one that continues to astonish me.

Keith Gave is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and 2018 Mountainview graduate whose bestselling debut, The Russian Five, was turned into an award-winning documentary that he co-wrote and produced. A Miracle of Their Own: A Team, A Stunning Gold Medal and Newfound Dreams for American Girls, co-authored with Tim Rappleye, hits shelves in late October. Gave is also the author of Vlad the Impaler: More Epic Tales from Detroit’s ’97 Stanley Cup Conquest. I caught up with hockey’s Ethan Hunt ahead of the Miracle launch to discuss his trifecta, measured use of memoir, and the adjective that almost blew his cover.

—Gillian Kemmerer ‘24

GK: You spent three years in a West Berlin spy station eavesdropping on the Soviets for the National Security Agency. Who was harder to get information from—the operatives you spied on, or professional hockey players?

Keith Gave (KG): Well, I'll tell you that when the Russians were drunk and playing with their radios, they were a lot of fun to listen to—especially on New Year’s Eve. You could hear them singing songs, telling stories and crying that they were homesick. They wanted to get home to Irkutsk and back to their wives. But for the most part, we were hearing ciphered speech. We could tell they were speaking, but we could not understand what they were saying. We taped all of that stuff and sent it back to NSA Headquarters in Fort Meade, where the code breakers were able to get to it. They never really said much in terms of when the war was going to start or stop, or whatever. The Russians were difficult to get information from, hence the thousands of spies at the NSA.

As for hockey players, when I covered them in the mid-80s, they were great to talk with. It was pretty easy to establish relationships with them. I did not go out drinking or partying with them, that was one of those lines we did not cross—but after they had a few pops, sometimes they were more forthcoming as well. A guy like Steve Yzerman loved challenging and curveball questions. If you asked him cliché questions, you got cliché answers. Brendan Shanahan had the gift of Irish gab; all you had to do was ask him any dumb question and he would fill your notebook. Toward the turn of the century, teams began to control the message and limit access to players. COVID played right into [teams’] hands, closing the dressing room and doing everything by Zoom. I would not want the job I had at the Free Press now, not for anything in the world. It’s a horrible job now.

GK: Speaking of shifts in the profession, the rise of New Journalism has permitted reporters to occupy more profound spaces in their own stories. This was not en vogue when you began, and I know you concealed the role you played in Fedorov and Konstantinov’s defections from the Free Press for years. Did you ever have a moment where the truth nearly slipped out?

KG: I wrote the very first story after [former Red Wings executive] Jim Lites called me from the plane. “Guess who’s sitting next to me, Keith?” He asked. It was Sergei Fedorov. I pushed my plate away, grabbed my notebook and started interviewing him. The desk gave me thirty-five minutes to write the story, and I got a call about ten minutes after filing. The copy editor asked, “How did you know that it was a sultry summer night in Helsinki?” I had to do some really fast talking. I said that I talked with the guy who was over there, and he told me that it was an unusually hot, humid evening in Northern Europe—even for August. I was sweating bullets, but that was the closest.

I had to be really careful because I knew that if they found out, I'd lose my job. I had been skating on some ethical thin ice. I taught journalism for twenty years and always told my students, "Never, ever do anything like that. You don't do favors for the team you cover." And I did a big one. I made a deal to do it on my own dime on the condition that, if and when these guys started coming over, I wanted the story first for my readers at the Free Press. Luckily, it turned out that way—and the newspaper was really gracious to me when the book came out. They helped me to sell a lot of books.

GK: Of all the words to have torpedoed a hockey career—sultry. Can you imagine.

KG: I know, exactly. And it’s one of my favorite words.

GK: It really captures the humidity clinging to you. The seductive breeze. I get it.

KG: I try not to use it too much, but it's a good word.

GK: Your use of first-person narrative in The Russian Five is restrained, which makes it really impactful. There is this one moment in Voskresensk where you re-enter the story somewhat unexpectedly and drop a haunting exchange between yourself and Slava Kozlov's father. Why did you choose that moment to hold the reader’s hand?

KG: As that moment was happening, I was getting chills down my back. [Kozlov]’s father dragged me out of the house by my arm and said, "I need to show you this." It was a little spot in a dumpy yard with a wretched-looking apple tree. You could tell that it was a low-lying area where water would gather if it rained or snowed enough. He told me that this was where his son took his first strides on skates. He told me how proud he was. Nobody knew how good Slava Kozlov was going to be in the NHL. As a matter of fact, his statistics over his entire career are worth a discussion about whether or not he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. But that moment was so inspiring to me because his father was almost tearful. He was a really kind and emotional man, very thoughtful. The only way I could resurrect that moment for the reader was to put myself there.

GK: If you were writing The Russian Five in this moment in time, would the political environment change how you framed it? Do you think current circumstances underscore the importance of such a story?

KG: Both. I think what is happening there underscores it. When I was writing that story, even though things were changing, I was still committed to the whole business of sports connecting cultures. I was still holding on to my vision of a world where the former Soviet Union and the United States of America could keep building those bridges. As a kid growing up in the fifties, everybody was talking about air-raids and bomb shelters. We had to do drills at school for when the Russians started dropping bombs on us. You grew up hating them. You were indoctrinated. Then I was in Russian language school in Monterey, California, learning from older Russians who lived through horrible times and had found their way to the United States. It was so important to them to teach us the language so we could fight the Cold War. You could not help but take it seriously. When I was writing the book, all of those things were in my mind—and I have a deep affinity for the Russian people to this day.

Honestly, Gillian, I don’t know how I would approach it now. I think I would want to maintain my hope and vision for what could have been, what could be. I was there in 1997 when the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup and they took it to Red Square. I saw how the Russians reacted—not so much to the Stanley Cup, but to their players. They were their heroes over in the U.S., doing great things and making them proud. You could see these two worlds coming together and making it work—and suddenly, it's not. And it's heartbreaking.

GK: You know the role that The Russian Five played in my life, but as I reflect on those origins as a fan, women’s hockey was unfathomable to me until Nagano 1998. Your latest book centers on the U.S. team that won the first-ever gold medal in women’s hockey. What ignited your interest?

KG: It was almost love at first sight between myself and women's hockey. I just loved the whole idea of it. I was in Nagano for the Dallas Morning News at the time. They gave me carte blanche to find the stories and to write about them. I made a point to cover the very first game of the women's tournament between Sweden and Finland. There might have been ten reporters in the press box, a few hundred fans maybe, family members of the players. At the end of the tournament, the Americans upset Canada in a very, very good hockey game. Two women approached the podium with a tray of gleaming gold medals. [U.S. Captain] Cammi Granato bent from the waist in a perfect Japanese bow. The first women’s hockey gold medal at an Olympics was placed around her neck. I was watching the reactions of her teammates, most of whom were doubled-over in emotion. I had been covering sports for well over twenty years, and that was the single most emotional moment I had ever experienced. It did something to me. I was not thinking in any way, shape or form that it was going to be a great book one day.

GK: So when did you realize it could be a book? Was it different from your process with The Russian Five?

KG: On June 7, 1997, when the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup and I was in the locker room, I ran into Sergei [Fedorov]. He was in the corner with Anna Kournikova and a whole bunch of other pretty girls. Sergei leaned over and said, “Keith, you remember that night in Helsinki a long time ago?” I said, “Yes, Sergei. I remember.” He replied, “I remember too. I never tell anybody.” I was thrilled that he chose to tell me in that moment that he remembered. I was driving home at three or four in the morning thinking that I needed to sit down and start writing that stuff because it could be a book one day. I wrote four or five thousand words, tucked them away. That was until I got into the Mountainview MFA and started to write my ass off. I would never, ever have been able to get The Russian Five published without that program.

With regard to the Miracle book, I was at the Traverse City prospects tournament in 2019 pushing The Russian Five. John Vanbiesbrouck came by and gave me a thumbs up. He said, “I’ve got an idea for your next book — Nagano ’98.” The lightbulb went on. We both witnessed that emotional, golden moment by Team USA. And I’m thinking, “You know what? That’s a damn good book.” I started digging away and realized pretty quickly, to be perfectly honest, that I was in way over my head. I wouldn’t have been able to do it myself, and I wound up writing with Tim Rappleye, who I met at the National Writers Series in Traverse City.

GK: What was the experience of co-authorship like for you?

KG: When it comes to covering a story, a big story, I sometimes don't play well with others. However, I worked for a newspaper—and putting out a newspaper is the best team sport I know. Writing a book is a team sport, too. Nobody does it alone. I got a lot of help from my three mentors in the MFA program and my peer group sessions. When Tim and I started working together, things flowed really nicely. He would write some things and I would come back and say, “I see some problems here—let’s work on the lede. I think your lede is down here; let’s move it up.” And so on. He did the same with mine.

GK: Did anything about this third book experience differ from the first two?

KG: There were some really hard stories to get to. Shannon Miller, the head coach of Canada, was a hard nut to crack—but I wound up doing five or six interviews with her. She was in tears half of the time. I discovered that she was a completely different character than people had imagined. We have another chapter called Sleeping with the Enemy, where you had women from both teams hopping into bed with one another. You had people on both sides—but especially the American side—saying, “This is bullshit. We don’t want anyone to be that close to any of our players. We’re trying to win a gold medal.” But there have been three marriages, really great, model marriages, between women of Team USA and Canada. They have the kind of relationships that many of us should aspire to. There are some great interviews in this book that Hollywood would love.

GK: I previewed one chapter from the Miracle book—Of Pucks and Ponytails. You write: “Little girls fall in love with hockey for the same reason little boys do.” It made me wonder if women’s hockey players express that love or frame their stories in ways that differ from the men you spent a career covering.

KG: That's a great question, and I don't think so. Sarah Tueting is the prime example of a kid just absolutely falling head-over-heels in love with her goalie pads. “I laid down on my stomach and my dad strapped them up. When I stood up, I was a goaltender." I mean, that line gives me chills, but that is how she identified with herself until she was twenty-one years old sporting a gold medal. When I talk to boys, I always ask, "How'd you become a goaltender?" There are always two reasons why. One of them is that they had older brothers who needed somebody to shoot at.

GK: Every single time.

KG: Or if it's not that, they say, "Oh, the equipment. I just love the equipment." Little girls are no different.

GK: You have written three books, completed an MFA, received a Pulitzer nomination, spied on the Soviets. I imagine that the standards for what you read are sky-high. What qualities do you admire most in a writer?

KG: I am inspired by the kind of writing that I know I could never do myself. When I read some passages from Pat Conroy in The Prince of Tides and Beach Music, I want to throw the book against the wall. That kind of work inspires me. Janet Fitch, The Revolution of Marina M and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. Fredrik Backman can make you laugh and cry, sometimes in the same sentence. Writing like that gives me chills down my back and makes me feel small, because I know I'd never, ever be able to write like that. You know who else writes like that? When I read her work in my first semester of the MFA program—Nadia Owusu. Nadia's work does that to me. Writers who make you feel, I guess that's what I look for.

Keith Gave - www.keithgave.com
New Book: A Miracle of Their Own: A Team, A Stunning Gold Medal and Newfound Dreams for American Girls