There is a good deal of debate among historians regarding Nick's background in hockey. On the one side, there is the camp led by Dmitri Volkov at the Russian State University for the Humanities which claims that he was a member of the great Soviet teams of the 1970s. Their claim rests on first hand accounts of alleged teammates (Volkov, 1988, ch. 3) and some suspicious documentary evidence. On the other side of the debate, the "Princeton Sticklers," as they have been derisively dubbed by Volkov, argue that given the fact that Nick was born in 1972 it is highly unlikely that Nick was a member of these teams. As Granger says, "Volko's claim that Nick was at Innsbruck is suspect at best. In 1976 Nick was four years old. Despite his profound athleticism, it is doubtful that Nick could have acquired the requisite skill to play at the Olympic level by the age of four." (Murphy et al., 1996, p. 221). Moreover, they point to this photograph as evidence that, though certainly playing hockey in the 1970s, Nick was not playing for the USSR, but Oak Ridges, Ontario.

One recent development which has caused quite a stir within the scholarly community is the shocking claim by Victoria Brezhnev, widow of former General Secretary of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, that she and Nick carried on an intermittent love affair between 1973 and 1979. While the Volkov camp has obviously been quick to adopt this as further evidence for their claims, the Princeton camp has questioned Mrs. Brezhnev's credibility, pointing to her claims to also having had affairs with Jay-Z, Suzanne Somers, and Moses.

There is of course the story from Nick himself who says that both camps are actually wrong. While he didn't play for the Soviet teams, neither did he play for the Oak Ridges team. The picture of him wearing the Oak Ridges jersey is explained by the fact that his neighbor, John, on whose Skidoo he sometimes got to ride, played for the Oak Ridges team and when John outgrew his equipment handed it down to Nick. Moreover, despite growing up in Ontario for a significant portion of this youth, Nick says that he didn't actually play that much hockey. Like all children in Canada he did of course play, but never joined an organized youth team. Nevertheless, he always enjoyed playing and when he discovered there was a league in New York in which he wouldn't embarrass himself he jumped at the chance to play. Nick says he's enjoying himself immensely and is eagerly awaiting the day when the backwards-crossover fairy will visit him and leave a counter clockwise under his pillow.

Nick has neither confirmed nor denied Mrs. Brezhnev's claim.