‘Kids of Ukraine’ Lupandin is looking for a better life for his children in Saskatoon

walterpalladNovember 25, 2022

Andrei Lupandin, 1995, file photo

One day in November 1993, Andrei Lupandin, the best player of the famous Druzhba ’78 Ukrainian children’s team from Kharkiv, gathered with three teammates at the Gretzky statue outside Rexall Place to drive to the Canadian Barn. Stormed.

Unfortunately, the photo also included tyrannical coach Ivan Pravilov, a sadistic abuser of the boys on the team. He was smiling, but the others were not.

Flash forward to November 2022. Lupandin, now 44, was once his MVP of the legendary Quebec International Pee Wee Tournament and later played for the current Vegas GM Kelly for junior Brandon His Wheat His Kings under McCrimmon. He poses with his two sons Denise, 12, and Ilya, 15, in the same Gretzky statue (now outside Rogers Place).

Now he is on a different path, with his family hoping to live in Canada full-time after leaving war-torn Ukraine on refugee visas..

Andrei, his wife Antonina, and his son recently came to Edmonton and fled into a basement with about 40 people from their first bombed Ukrainian apartment. He then fled to Bratislava, Slovakia on a 28-hour bus, where he stayed for six months with the help of friends. As they left Bratislava for Canada, Andrei’s dad passed away — unable to say goodbye — a final heartache.

After completing the visa process, he left everything behind with little money and only one hockey bag and one suitcase in Sass, a country with a large Ukrainian population and two boys attending school in Canada. I started a new life in Cartoon.

They are diving into the unknown as a family. For Andrei, McCrimmon’s junior at the age of 17 is his second time to play hockey after leaving Europe with only one bag.

“Now that his family has nothing, his children can have a better life,” said Saskatoon resident Gary Gelinas. Gary used to be president of WHL Everett Silvertips.

They set up a Gofundme page to help Lupandin.

https://gofund.me/9525bb86

Gelinas helped a 17-year-old girl reach WHL.

“Andrei was playing for the Dynamo Organization in Moscow and I had to physically pay someone about $500 to get Andrei’s passport … someone had it.” said Gary. “At three o’clock in the morning he sneaked out, got on the train back to Kharkov, got one bag, got back on the train and we flew him from Moscow to Edmonton. When he landed in Edmonton. , I remember saying, “Where’s the rest of your bag?” He said, ‘This is it’

When the family was in Edmonton, the Lupandins were with Gary’s father, Roger, who was a player on the first Edmonton Oil Kings junior team in the 50’s. Teenager Lupandin lived with Roger and his wife in the summer while Andrei played junior hockey. They also plan to come face-to-face with another old Druzhba host, Walter Bubby, who wrote a book about the team.

It’s been a long, sad road to Canada.

“When we were there, a lot of bombing started in Kharkov and it was very bad. “It was a nightmare. We moved into my wife’s mother’s house, the basement. It was like a basement. Bomb safe.”

“I was more afraid of the kids…we didn’t like being scared of them, so we couldn’t do anything about it. That was the worst,” he said. “I don’t know how long this war will last. I want it to end today.”

His sons are in Canada today. Dennis plans to play for his team of representatives Ukraine in 1992 at his Pee Wee Tournament in Quebec, the same that his father participated in. In this team were his future NHL players Dina Zubras and Andrei Zhuzhin, then NHL draft picks were his three: Konstantin Kalmykov and Dmitri Yakusin (Leafs), Gennady Radzin. (Montreal).

They got a big older team from Hartford, which Andrei says “everyone seemed to be shaved”.

Now it’s Dennis’ turn. He’s a great skater with defense like Andrei.

Ilya also played and was pretty good, but had a bad knee and quit.

“I don’t want Ilya to show up in sports anymore. He’s pretty smart, he can do better. He likes working with computers,” said Andrei, “andrei plays junior hockey.” He quit and then played professionally in the United States for nine years before playing in Belarus and Ukraine.

Moving to Bratislava was the next leg of three weeks in the basement. “We took the bus to Bratislava, which took him 28 hours. We stopped at all the checkpoints and checked the passports.”

“I got through it … but the woman who took our passports was really angry (because Belarus has strong ties with Russia). I also have a Ukrainian green card. So they They didn’t ask me too many questions, and with a Belarusian passport they would have held me for 15 hours and thought I was a spy,” he said.

Andrei’s wife worked as a legal assistant in Ukraine, but in Bratislava they both got jobs at the European version of Amazon, sorting packages and making sure they were delivered to the correct address.

Rupandin wouldn’t have had the Canadian hockey experience without Druzhba, but he, along with many other coaches, was physically abused by a coach who was never happy. I stole my childhood, ”he said after Pravilov’s death.

“I don’t think[Druzhba]had a bad time because of the coach…I just see it as a good time because of the players.”

Now he hopes to spend some quality time with his family in Saskatoon.

“I want them to have a future,” he said.