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In the wee hours of New Year's Day, Alex Kovalev will step off a Canadiens charter from North Carolina and walk through the door of his Montreal home.

It remains to be seen whether his wife, Eugenia, will see him enter quietly as the father of their two small boys, or burst in as Santa Claus.

As a child in Russia, Kovalev didn't celebrate Christmas as much as he did New Year's Eve, when families gathered, gifts were exchanged and a hearty meal was enjoyed.

The politics of communism dictated traditions in his homeland for three-quarters of a century. From the 1917 Russian Revolution until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 - six months after Kovalev was drafted by the NHL's New York Rangers - public celebration of Christmas and other religious occasions was banned by the state.

But Christmas came no matter the law, welcomed by the Russian Orthodox Church on Jan. 7 in accordance with the Julian calendar.

Kovalev's family would quietly mark the day at home in Togliatti, a city on the banks of the Volga River, 1,000 kilometres from Moscow. But now, during this holiday season, the brilliant Canadiens forward is thinking about trading in a red, white and blue uniform for one of red, white and black.

With a little padding, he figures he'd fill out a Santa suit, one he'd surely find for rent a week after Christmas to delight Nikita, 3 1/2, and Ivan, 1 1/2.

"They don't understand that Santa is not real and isn't going to come to their house to bring them presents. So maybe ...," Kovalev said, eyes brightening as his idea rounded into shape.

The 32-year-old played Pere Noel to perfection on Tuesday. Returning from a five-week, 13-game layoff following knee surgery, Kovalev handed Canadiens fans a spectacular gift: a 4-3 home-ice win over the Ottawa Senators. He scored twice - the 300th goal of his career and, later, the game-winner in a shootout - and added two assists, the first earning him his 700th NHL point.

In squeezing this game in his fist and leading the injury-depleted Canadiens to an improbable victory over the league's top-ranked club, Kovalev proved beyond a doubt his value to this franchise.

Wednesday noon at the Bell Centre, a wool tuque pulled to his eyebrows, thoughts of the win curled a smile beneath a thick nose bloodied the night before by a careless stick.

His mood lifted higher still as he warmed to talk of the holidays that await with his family.

Kovalev recalls Christmas in Togliatti being a simple meal and an expression of goodbye to the old year with a hello to the new. But New Year's Eve was a joy - people in the streets, all-night parties, a rich meal.

"You couldn't expect many presents," he said. "But we were happy just to have something to celebrate. Everybody was smiling, happy to go outside with friends to have fun in the snow."

"We'd make toys for ourselves, or make drums we'd bang with things from my mom's kitchen," Kovalev said.

Vyacheslav and Pavlina Kovalev were raising two sports-minded children, daughter Irina three years the senior of Alex. And there were regular squabbles over who would wear the hockey or figure skates.

Irina, it turned out, had to wrestle her figure skates away from her brother.

Four-year-old Alex loved them, more comfortable with their wider blade and superior ankle support. He learned to accelerate by pushing off the toe picks, practising long hours on a rink outside Togliatti's stadium, and wore figure skates until he joined his first hockey team.

"I still pushed off the toes," he said of his early adventures in hockey skates. "My dad would be yelling from outside the boards: 'Alex! Skate normal!' It took me a few days to get used to them."

But Kovalev would never see skates beneath the decorated tree, and it would be years before he'd own a quality pair.

"You could get them only from Europe or America, and my parents didn't have friends outside of Russia," he said. "So my dad would get me whatever was in the store, make some adjustments to them, and that was it."

At 14, by now a superb skater with enormous potential, he left home without his parents' blessing and moved to Moscow, living with others his age to join the developmental program of the legendary Dynamo organization.

Two years later, he was the youngest player ever on one of the USSR's greatest club teams, an eyeful for the NHL scouts trolling Russia for talent.

In 1991, the Rangers made Kovalev the first Russian chosen in the NHL draft's first round, and he crossed the Atlantic as a 19-year-old rookie.

He was visited from time to time that season by his girlfriend, Eugenia, an excellent tennis player he'd met on a Moscow court three years earlier.

Weary of U.S. entry requirements, the couple flew home and bought a marriage certificate for $150, which earned Eugenia a visa from the American embassy. Five years later, Kovalev produced a ring on a flight back to Russia.

"I told her: 'We don't have much time, but I'd like to have a nice wedding,' " he recalled. "So we've been married since I was 19. Or 24."

In his 13th NHL season, Kovalev is still viewed as the league's most purely skilled player. His stickhandling and footwork are a thing of beauty; viewed in slow-motion, they are breathtaking.

He won the Stanley Cup with New York in 1994, and played 920 games with the Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins before arriving in Montreal from New York in a February 2004 trade for Josef Balej and a 2004 second-round draft pick (Bruce Graham).

Along the way, he earned two Olympic medals - gold with the Unified Team in 1992, bronze with Russia in 2002 - and will be counted on heavily by the Russians in Turin come February.

Kovalev signed with the Canadiens in August as an unrestricted free agent, agreeing to a four-year, $18-million U.S. contract. Montreal's passion for hockey was a large part of his decision.

And in this city, as in Russia, where his parents and sister still live, Christmas remains his second-favourite winter holiday.

He returned home early this morning from Washington, greeting Ivan at home with his nanny, then will fly to Atlanta on Monday, the Canadiens playing four games in six nights.

Eugenia and Nikita are in Colorado, skiing with friends, and will return next Friday, the day before Kovalev, or Santa Claus, returns from his New Year's Eve game against Carolina.

It's then this family will celebrate with a meal of Russian staples, after the boys have torn into their gifts. Kovalev will have walked a fine line with his credit cards, a life lesson in mind.

"My nephew calls me and asks me to send him this and that so he can look good," Kovalev said. "I explain to him, 'It's not how you look, but how you play.'

"When I broke a stick, my father fixed it and gave it back to me. You must also show you're a good player.

"We try not to spoil our boys, but I

also cannot say to them, 'This is the equipment I grew up playing in, so I'm not going to buy you anything else.' If they have better skates than I had as a boy, learning will be easier."

Kovalev hopes to spend some holiday time with fellow Russians Alexander Perezhogin, Andrei Markov and perhaps farmhand Andrei Kostitsyn, Canadiens in whom he might see a bit of himself when he was new to North America, speaking little English.

"They're a little like cats," he joked of his teammates. "They'd rather stay home on the sofa and watch TV.

"I understand it's hard on someone like Perezhogin, who (at 21) is much younger than us. Maybe he feels like I did, when I went to dinner with Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky.

"I just want to tell them that's not the way it is. We're from the same country. We're here together, and we should be together."

For now, Kovalev has more pressing concerns. By midweek, he hadn't finished shopping for his wife, and thought this game might go into overtime.

There's no arguing his logic:

"If I shop early, I'll buy a gift then later find something I like even better," he explained. "But if I have just a short time, maybe two hours, then it always winds up a really good gift.

"And the simplest thing is often the best present."

He recalls a crocodile-skin wallet he once gave his mother, then learned much later that she kept it hidden in a drawer, afraid to use it. For her birthday in January, Eugenia receives three baskets of different-coloured roses.

Kovalev admits he doesn't help his wife by buying himself anything at any time. She's already challenged by the man who has everything, including a Cessna 414 he pilots himself.

"Maybe a propeller from an old airplane that I can make into a ceiling fan," he said, grinning.

"No, I don't need crazy stuff. I'm happy with anything that shows someone has taken even a moment to think of me."

Since his childhood in Togliatti, when he'd find few gifts, but many joyful people around the tree, Kovalev has known the finest present is the one not wrapped.

"Eugenia likes to surprise me," he said. "But I tell her: 'The greatest gift is one I already have. I have you and the kids.' "

dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005