September 11, 2014. A monument to Chelyabinsk tractors was erected next to the new Tractor Sports Palace that was recently commissioned in Chelyabinsk. The local tractor industry was actually the reason Tractor hockey school was set up to raise renowned Russian, world, and Olympic champions.

According to Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service, Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, its member enterprise now known as ChTZ Uraltrac, became home to an amateur team of South Urals’ hockey players in the forties. This was also the place to host the first puck games clubs.

‘The plant’s Director-General Isaac Salzmann then sent the team’s first coach and captain Viktor Vassilyev to Moscow so that he could learn the ABCs of ‘the Canadian entertainment’ there together with the would-be coaches Arkady Chernyshev and Anatoly Tarasov. An ice rink was then created for the game so as to give the players a chance to practice,’ the press service says.

This is how the hockey team came to be known as one of ChTZ’s primary sports ‘subdivisions’. Financing the ice team was a special proviso in the labor contract signed by the trade union and the plant management; staff members would meet up with the hockey players at the company club to find solutions to the team’s problems together.