From Jeff Gordon of the STLToday.com:

Korolev came to St. Louis with Vitali (Big V) Karamnov and Vitali (Little V) Prokhorov as part of this team's much-ballyhooed Russian invasion.

General manager Ron Caron drafted them sight unseen and brought them to North America. Korolev, the most talented of the three players, didn't make a big mark here (43 points in 147 games) but had enjoyed a 795-game run in the NHL.

His signature play for the Blues was controlling the puck in the corner, passing the puck to himself again and again while waiting for a play to materialize -— and for coach Bob Berry's heart to explode on the Blues bench.

Chronicling Korolev's challenging transition to North American life was one of my favorite Post-Dispatch hockey stories of all time. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was visiting Igor and his family at their rented home in South St. Louis County after a season, with fellow Russian Alexei Zhamnov in town visiting them.

As I recalled, he chose his words carefully and smiled a lot -— pretty much his M.O. during his whole career.