UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 8, 2010. The story of a well-known Russian hockey player Pavel Datsyuk responding to the participants of the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s essay contest for children took a new turn. The famous player, who is, in fact, an alumnus of Yekaterinburg hockey school and one of the National Hockey League’s top ten players as well as a multiple Olympic and World champion and winner of the world’s most valuable hockey trophy, the Stanley Cup, wrote some letters to the contestants.
The letters are addressed to five children who go in for hockey and who wrote about this in their essay entitled ‘When I’m Twenty’.
Pavel saw some citations from the children’s essays in the media and decided to write to the authors. The hockey player promised to write to all the hockey-playing contestants and kept his promise. The bank has already received his letters and some photographs with autographs and good wishes for all the five boys. The wishes read, ‘Don’t stop at your first success,’ ‘Success & Confidence,’ ‘Good luck in life!’ In addition to the photographs, the parcel from overseas also contained some souvenirs – a few baseball caps with the logo of the Russian forward’s club.
The bank is now contacting the addressees to hand the ‘trophies’ over to them. What is more, the participants of the contest will receive a truly miraculous surprise from the UBRD at New Year; a surprise they never even dreamed of.
‘You should have some faith. Dreams come true!’ the hockey player wrote on the photographs.