by Brian A. Shactman - Photos by Peter Bronsteen

Hockey players - and even their parents - often ask themselves how far they would go for the game of hockey. Usually, it's a rhetorical question on the way to a 6 a.m. practice or after having to fork over a small fortune for a season of games.

But 27-year old Alex Westlund, a 1999 Yale University graduate and former second-team All-American, brought the question to a new level - well beyond the figurative. Westlund spent this season as a goalie in the Russian Professional League. He didn't play in Moscow for Dynamo or Spartak, the team names hockey fans actually recognize. Nope. Westlund played in Khabarovsk for the Amur Tigers. Never heard of them? There's a good reason for that. Truth be told, Khabarovsk might be as close to Moscow as you are as you read this. No joke. The city of roughly 700,000 people is in the same time zone as Japan - seven hours' difference east of Moscow. It's not even on the European side of Russia.

It's the eastern side of nowhere.

"I often describe Khabarovsk to people who don't know Russia well as this: You go to Moscow, make a right, and you will be there in four days," joked Westlund. "We are about five miles from the Chinese border. From what I understand, we are not even Siberia as we are too far (to the) east. So we are considered the Far East."

How would you like to be playing hockey east of Siberia? Fine if that meant across the Pacific in L.A. or Anaheim - or anywhere in the NHL, for that matter. At first glance, it seems ridiculous to do what is the hockey equivalent of walking upstream, against a strong current, in the river of professional hockey. Almost any Russian or European player would readily admit that life's goal is to travel to North America to play professional hockey. The potential financial gains are greater. Life is easier. And it just happens to host the world's best hockey league.

The potential explanations for Westlund's unlikely move seem clear: Desperation, money or just a quirky sense for adventure. But for his career, moving to the far reaches of the hockey world actually makes sense.

"The travel is tough. The weather is tough, but the hockey is certainly an upgrade over the East Coast League and even some teams in the American League," said Tim Taylor, his former coach at Yale. "Alex is devoted and committed to giving his career every opportunity. This could easily lead to a tryout at an NHL camp next year."

Goalies need to play. It's not like a forward when a team rolls out four lines, or a defenseman in a six-man rotation. It seems an over-simplification, but only one can play at a time, so a netminder needs to be where he can gain consistent ice time. The Russian league does have the respect of the international hockey community, and it was a chance for Westlund to start almost every game and surprisingly, even make a little more money than in the North American minor leagues.

"You go to Moscow, make a right, and you will be there in four days," joked Westlund.

For Westlund, it worked out extremely well, especially in the context of the last few years of his career. After leaving Yale, he spent a few seasons toiling in the lower-level minor leagues, playing well but never earning more than six games at the AHL level, let alone warm-ups in the NHL. In fact, no NHL team would place the prospect tag on the mid-20s goalie as he continued to pursue his dream of making the highest level of professional hockey.

Something had to change. His stints last season with the Toledo Storm and Cincinnati Cyclones of the East Coast League weren't doing anything for his career, so when someone broached the possibility of a dramatic change, Westlund listened, albeit skeptically.

"With about a month to go in the season last year, I got a call on my cell phone about midnight from a guy who spoke broken English and asked if I would be interested in playing in the Russian Super League," Westlund recalled. "I was a bit confused and thought it was one of the Russian guys on our team playing a joke. But I gave him my agent's number and thought nothing more about it until one of the Russian guys brought it up to me the next morning at practice.

"So, I asked him a lot of questions about the league, the city that called me, etc ... The team then worked out a deal with my agent, and now I'm here, seven months full of Russian experiences."

For the most part, those experiences were positive. Most importantly, Westlund played great hockey, saving nearly 93 percent of the shots he faced and allowing just over two goals a game. The only negatives on the ice were the frequent two-a-day practices and the fact that the Tigers were an average team.

Off the ice, it was a bit more challenging, especially concerning all the troubling news involving the United States and Iraq. During a tense time in the world, Westlund was a long way from the comfort zone of North America.

"It's kind of hard getting a real sense of the tone of our country being over here at a time like this. Kind of strange," said Westlund, who was born in New Jersey. "But I had a 3-foot by 5-foot American flag on my living room wall, adding nicely to the decorum."

In terms of the condition of that living room, Westlund actually was in excellent shape. A big apartment in a good location. Plus, he had access to a language translator. Meals were cooked for him. Overall, a good set-up.

But for a Yale graduate, even with the part-time use of a translator, living in a country with a completely foreign language was nothing short of a humbling experience.

"When I got here, I did not know a word. Well, I knew "shiba" just because Coach Taylor named his dog "shiba", which means puck in Russian. Leave it to Coach Taylor to do something like that. He has taught me language too.

"But it is very strange going from a somewhat educated person, at the very least literate, to where I knew less Russian than a 3-year-old child. It was strange being the one who was completely illiterate ... so helpless that I could not go the post office to get a package or to the store without some sort of struggle."

Instead of sinking inward and accepting a life or robotic movement - practice to bed, plane to game, to bed and then back again - Westlund did his best to learn from, and interact with, his community.

"That it is Russia kind of makes me laugh just because when I was little, Russia was the enemy," Westlund said. "With Communism, (Mikhail) Gorbachev - all the news about a strange and mysterious place far, far away.

"And now, I find this strange, mysterious place my home for 10 months of my life, perhaps more if I come back next season. It just kind of makes me laugh a bit when I step back and think how far, and how much, hockey has given me."

And if any scouts watched him play, after taking a right at Moscow and trekking four days east, hockey should give him another chance in North America. If not, it could be Khabarovsk again.

"I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to see another part of the world and see another culture firsthand," Westlund said. "I would go back again. The city is crazy about its hockey team."

You might think Westlund crazy to give Khabarovsk another try, but even if that didn't work out, he does have a Yale degree, you know. Crazy, he's not.

Brian A. Shactman is a freelance writer, sports anchor at WVIT in Hartford, Conn., and a frequent contributor to ESPN Radio.