Russian through the draft

The Canes and a bold drafting strategy

If you watched any of the 2024 NHL Draft, you probably noticed a couple of things. You might have gasped at the amazing views from inside the Vegas Sphere; you probably enjoyed the reaction of Beckett Sennecke to his selection at third overall, which shocked the new young Anaheim Ducks player himself at least as much as it shocked the onlookers. If you watched the whole first day’s coverage you might have groaned, as a Canes fan, when the Canes traded their only first round pick for two later picks, something the Canes have habitually done to increase the sheer number of selections they can make in a draft year—and you then saw them do the same thing a few times on the second day as well. But if you noticed all of that, you probably also noticed that the Canes made ten selections at this year’s draft, and six of those ten players are from Russia.

This isn’t new for the Carolina Hurricanes. The last several years have featured much the same strategy. The Canes’ top prospect right now, young Alexander Nikishin, was selected this way. Nikishin is playing his final year of his Russian contract and could potentially arrive in Raleigh in time for the NHL playoffs, presuming that his current team’s playoff run will have finished.

But why are the Canes selecting so many Russian players in the later rounds of the draft for several years in a row? What’s the thinking behind this approach to the draft?

The simple answer

There’s both a simple and a complicated answer to this question. The simple answer is that the Canes are selecting Russian players in later rounds because Russian players keep slipping below their projected pick level. A player who might be selected in the mid-second round might fall to the bottom of the third round if Russia is his place of birth. A player who might have been a solid third-rounder might end up near the bottom of the draft. This has been going on for a while now, and the Canes are taking advantage of the situation to draft players who are potentially more valuable than their draft ranking suggests. The aforementioned Alexander Nikishin was selected at 69th overall in his draft year; he may well end up at or near star-level in the NHL, once he gets here.

But that answer doesn’t get to the why—and the why is complicated.

The complex answer

Most hockey fans including this one are not experts on international politics. The reason Russian players are falling in the draft has to do with the complicated political picture in Russia right now, though, and it can’t be ignored. The ongoing war with Ukraine is the backdrop for the situation with young Russian hockey prospects. Strained international relations that have included the banning of Russian hockey players from international competitions by the IIHF have clouded things. Though plenty of hockey scouts are still working in Russian and reporting on players and prospects, the inability to see these young players in competitions like the World Juniors may impact the assessments being made in front offices far away from Russia.

Even if a team feels confident in scouting reports and other information about these young players, there’s still the concern about whether NHL drafted prospects in Russia will be able to come to North America to play. While this has not been a major issue as of yet, the Philadelphia Flyers faced a difficult situation with one of their Russian prospects, goalie Ivan Fedotov. Though Fedotov eventually made his way to the United States it was not a smooth path; and though the situation is completely different for Flyers’ prospect Matvei Michkov, who was released from his Russian contract early on compassionate grounds and could be playing in the NHL in the upcoming season, there is a sense of some uncertainty in general about the true future availability of some of the Russian players who can be selected at the NHL draft.

If it hasn’t been a real problem yet, though, why are NHL GMs more inclined to skip these players lately, leaving the opportunity for a team like the Hurricanes to do a little draft-day bargain shopping? It might take a hockey history lesson to explain that one.

Tales from the Cold War

If you have never read Keith Gave’s book, The Russian Five, or watched the extraordinarily good documentary based on Gave’s writing, you really should consider doing so. In this remarkable work, Gave tells the story of the Detroit Red Wings rise from basement-level futility to Stanley Cup Champions that began with their bold and surprising strategy of drafting Russian players into the NHL. The situation then was very different from what it is now; those players were behind the Iron Curtain with the Soviet Union calling all the shots. Older Gen-Xers, like me, remember the harrowing stories of athletes defecting to the West, and the Red Wings were involved in some of their players doing exactly that. The real danger to those players and their families from the Soviet government, the tremendous courage it took for them to come to the Unites States anyway, and the effect those players had on transforming the Red Wings into Stanley Cup champions is incredible to learn about.

The situation today doesn’t compare at all—at least, not yet. The concern some NHL general managers may have is that sometimes, history can repeat itself. Whether hockey players in the KHL will be used as political pawns, whether barriers in North America might go up that would restrict the ability of Russian-born players to enter and leave the US and Canada, whether the war will escalate or draw in other nations is all unknown. But quite a lot of NHL GMs are old enough to remember how things used to be, and though it might be an overreaction to pass on a talented youngster because of a fear that the political situation in Russia will deteriorate or the war in Ukraine will escalate it’s certainly not impossible that those kinds of concerns might make some GMs skip the Russian-born players below the first round; the risks might, in other words, seem worth taking for a potential superstar, or star, or even a probable NHL-level player; but it might not seem worth the risk for players who regardless of their country of birth have a longer shot of making it to the NHL in the first place, before any worries about whether they’ll ever be released from a KHL contract or allowed to leave Russia start to enter into the thought process.

Why the Canes aren’t afraid

The Carolina Hurricanes have likely weighed all these things too. But their actions show that they aren’t currently being influenced by the fears of potential future escalations or political situations that would limit the ability of their young Russian draft picks to come and play in Raleigh. The truth, as all teams know, is that players drafted below a certain draft level are increasingly unlikely to make it to the NHL in the first place, and only some of them will be able to play in the AHL or ECHL either. Selecting any player below pick number 100 is fraught with peril anyway, so if a player who should have been taken no lower than 70 is available at 100, why avoid the player over fears that, being Russian-born, he might face some unknown future difficulties when it’s time to head to North America? It’s a calculated risk, in other words, and the Canes have used these calculations to make some extremely good selections in the later rounds of the last several drafts.

If Alexander Nikishin successfully arrives in North Carolina sometime next spring, and if, moreover, he succeeds at a level not usually associated with players taken at pick number 69, the Canes’ gamble will have paid off, and will likely continue to do so. Other teams may follow suit (especially if the war with Ukraine can be ended soon, as we all hope it will). Until then, though, the Canes aren’t being reckless to pick so many Russian players; they’re choosing the best players available at those positions, and it’s not their fault that other teams have let so many good players fall.

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