For Orlov, Russian Five opened eyes, and path

NHL role models were few to nonexistent when Dmitry Orlov, now 31, was growing up in Siberia. He was born and raised some 2,200 miles east of Moscow, in the days when it wasn’t routine for the best league in the world to have its games beamed to all corners of the planet.

Dreams, like TV, were different then. It was the world before “dial up” jokes were invented.

Hockey fans in Orlov’s hometown of Novokuznetsk in the early ’90s, he noted, focused mainly on the annual World Championship and Olympics. The big sheets of international play were hockey’s showcase events. Infrequent glimpses of the NHL came in televised highlight packages.

“So if I was comparing my game to someone,” Orlov recalled, “it was like, you know . . . I had no one, really . . . I didn’t have NHL idols. I was only comparing to myself all the time, that was it.”

The Red Wings and their so-called Russian Five began to change all that in the mid-’90s. Russian kids, noted Orlov, were able to find a North American foothold, a focal point, in star countrymen Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov, Igor Larionov, Vladimir Konstantinov, and Slava Fetisov, the latter of whom was the star Russian defenseman who made his way to the NHL at the end of the ’80s to sign with New Jersey.

For a couple of seasons, in the thick of the Red Wings’ glorious resurgence, legendary coach Scotty Bowman often rolled out the Russian Five as a unit. They were together in 1996-97 when the Wings won the first of back-to-back Cups. It was a few years later, said Orlov, when he finally saw the Russian Five play, albeit by watching some of their games on VHS cassette tapes.

“It was nice to know at the time,” he said, “maybe you don’t understand what the NHL [is about], it’s a different world, but you could see the Russian Five and everybody remembered that . . . I was probably 11, 12 years old when finally I got to watch them. And you could probably ask any young player my age at the time, they all wanted to play for Detroit Red Wings because the Russian Five [were] there.”

Orlov, acquired from Washington at the February trade deadline, is the highest-caliber, best-performing Russian to pull on the Black and Gold. It took a long time for Mother Russia to allow her best stick-carrying sons to leave for North America. Approaching some 35 years after that exodus, it’s only now that the Bruins have a legit Russian rainmaker in the versatile, hard-hitting Orlov.

The Bruins came very close to striking it rich in the Russian market in ’97, using the No. 8 pick in the draft on speedy winger Sergei Samsonov. He stands as their best get. The Magical Muscovite jumped out to a very strong start, including Calder honors as Rookie of the Year, and popped for a careerhigh 75 points in 2000-01. In March ’06, he was ditched to Montreal for a package that included the draft pick that ultimately yielded Milan Lucic.

There have been other dalliances, be they ever so brief. Dmitri Kvartalnov, proud son of Voskresensk, arrived on Causeway Street with a bang in the autumn of ’92, just weeks after the Bruins broke from Canadian farmboy form and used the 16th pick in the draft to select the clever winger.

Kvartalnov, then 26, rolled up 72 points that rookie season under coach

Brian Sutter, thriving on the Bonanza Line with Adam Oates and Little Joe Juneau.

But midway through a sophomore season slump, Kvartalnov was ditched to Providence, never to be seen again in the old Garden. He played 13 more seasons, all of them in Europe.

In ’94, the Bruins used another first-round pick (No. 21) on unheralded, unproven, unknown Evegeni Ryabchikov. The Yaroslavl goalie spent four seasons in North America, but not a single minute of it with Boston. He was one of three first-rounders in that draft never to log an NHL game.

In the summer of 2000, the Bruins signed Andrei Kovalenko, an NHL vet of eight seasons, as a free agent forward. Known as The Tank, the 5-foot11-inch, 216-pound right winger, ex- of Red Army, figured to factor somewhere in the top-six forward group.

But the Tank proved empty. He, too, played seven more seasons, all of them back in Russia.

The costliest of the Russian misfires was Alexei Zhamnov, a talented center with some NHL bonafides, who signed on in the summer of ’05 for three years worth upward of $12 million. He was hired as critical No. 2 support for Jumbo Joe Thornton, then entering his eighth season.

Zhamnov suffered an ankle injury, played in only 24 games (1-9—10), and was eventually ushered out the back door with a fat paycheck. Thornton’s days soon came to a close when he was dealt on Nov. 30 of that year to the Sharks. The envisioned 1-2 punch at center turned out to be nothing but a punch in the nose and a large part of why GM Mike O’Connell was kicked out the door.

Orlov has been a seamless, valuable fit since his arrival. He can play the left or right side, contribute no matter the pairing, and opened the playoffs riding on the top unit with Charlie McAvoy.

Russians, said Bruins coach Jim Montgomery, often project a veneer, making it hard to get to know them. He experienced that late in his playing days when he spent some five months in Ufa, roughly 800 miles east of Moscow, in the KHL.

“They are very careful people,” said Montgomery. “They don’t trust people. You really have to earn their trust before they let you in. Once they let you in, they treat you like gold. Like my first two months over there was very lonely. My last three months was a blast, you know, just because of my teammates.”

Montgomery said he learned a little of the language, which helped him welcome Orlov aboard when he joined the club at the end of February. Orlov, he said, was very receptive and gregarious from the start.

“I think he was shocked when I spit out [in Russian] ‘My name is’, and

‘How are you doing?’ and a couple of swear words,” said a smiling Montgomery, who also is fluent in French. “And we were good to go.”

Orlov, dealt out of Washington in part because management felt it would be a challenge to meet his price in free agency, is free to shop the market July 1. He is finishing a long-term deal that carries a $5.1 million cap hit — a price that would be hard for the Bruins to fit in to their projected cap model.

It’s possible, though, especially if the Bruins have a long Cup run, that Orlov could fall in love with the Hub of Hockey. It isn’t always about the most dollars. For some, fit matters, and thus far Orlov has adapted well, and especially likes that he can walk from his apartment to Fenway Park.

“Just waiting for the nice weather, you know,” he said, “so we can go to the game.”