When Vladimir Bobylev was four-years-old, all he wanted to do was play hockey.



“I’d just spend all of my time outside our house with the stick,” Bobylev recalled. “That’s all I would do.”



But Bobylev’s town of Lipetsk in Russia didn’t have a hockey league for four-year-olds. The only way for Bobylev to get on the ice was to take figure skating lessons. Bobylev didn’t particularly like figure skating, he said, but it eventually helped him on his path to hockey, which he began playing at the age of five after he was given permission to enrol in a league for six-year-olds.



Little did he know, however, years later, he would find himself once again taking lessons from a figure skater.



“She’s been great, they’ve all helped me with my skating and I’m only going to get better,” he said about the Maple Leafs’ skating consultant Barb Underhill, a former Canadian figure...