Russia has never been any good at producing defenders.
We seem to get a vezina caliber goalie in every generation (Vasilevskiy, Bobrovskiy, Varlamov, Khabibulin), but we are not a goalies factory like Finland. Russia is mostly about two-way centers (Malkin, Datsyuk, Fedorov) and high-scoring wingers, who usually play on their off-side.
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