The sport of hockey, at least in the United States, didn’t always have the Russian influence that it now has. There was a time where players from the former Soviet Union first came over to American shores and started in the NHL. Filmmaker Gabe Polsky has looked at that before, but for his latest documentary, he’s chronicling a period where an NHL franchise actually went to Russia and tried to save their sport over there. The result is Red Penguins, a unique and entertaining doc that only falls a bit short when it attempts to be overly important at the end. Out now, it’s a quality flick that shines a light on a story you almost certainly were unaware of.

This film, as you might imagine, is a sports documentary about the incredible true partnership between Russia and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, an NHL franchise in the Penguins and the famed Red Army hockey team formed a joint venture together. Capitalism was obviously at the center of it, but also an attempt to show that anything was possible in the new Russia. Penguins owner Howard Baldwin sends his top marketing guy in Steve Warshaw to Russia with the heavy task of…