Hockey hugs for everybody! (Photo credit: Gary Wiepert)

On Friday night, the Carolina Hurricanes defeated the Buffalo Sabres 3-1 at First Niagara Center and one former Washington Capital had a first. Alex Semin, after starting the season with two bad penalties, scored his first goal with the Canes, one of those classic Sasha no-look wrist shots that found the top corner of the net.

Video is below the jump.

After Sasha scored, Carolina Hurricanes color announcer Tripp Tracy attempted to salute Semin with John Forslund’s classic goal call of “Hey hey whaddya say!” in Russian. Unfortunately for Tracy, he failed… badly. In awful Russian, the Canes announcer struggles through “Nu, nu, chto vy govoritsya.” In Russian, that means, “Well, Well. What you is spelled?” RMNB’s Fedor Fedin tells us he should’ve exclaimed, “Kak naschet etogo?” which is Russian for, “What about this?!” Oh, well. Next time, Tripp.

Meanwhile, Semin has been doing interviews — albeit short ones — with the press. Here’s one from a week ago. We went ahead and translated what Semin said since his translator was a bit off on it.

Question: Alex, you look at this as a new start?

Semin: Inarguably [I see this as a new start]. I’ve never changed teams before, it’s the first time in my career. I think it’s nothing special. I changed a team, but hockey is the same, we’ll go out there and play.

Translator: Obviously this is the first time he’s been traded in his career. He just sees it as the same sport, hockey, and he’s out here to do his best and help his team in any way possible.

Question:How much does playing against Eric Staal [when you were in Washington] help you blend with him [here]?

Semin: I don’t know, how many [games we’ll need to blend with Eric Staal]. I think we’ll help out each other, everything will be good, the team will be winning. That’s not like we two are the only ones playing. The team is playing.

Translator: He says, uhhh, the two of us are playing as a team with all the players. Together we should be fine and help the team win.

Question:You’ve scored a lot of goals in this building. Do you have a good feeling here?

Semin: It would be good to keep it up this way. [Translator doesn’t hear, Semin repeats and smiles.]

Translator: It would obviously be very good if the results continue in this building.

Also, this is how I felt writing this story. That is all.

Translations by Fedor Fedin.