Strange things happen in the KHL all the time, and this morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff tries to make sense of Dmitri Buchelnikov’s situation.
Buchelnikov was recently traded from the mighty SKA St. Petersburg club to Vityaz Moscow Region, but the player Buchelnikov was traded for, former Red Wing Dmytro Timashov, was traded as well, with Timashov being sent to what is essentially SKA’s farm team in HC Sochi.
What does all of this have to do with Buchelnikov? It’s a strange turn of events for a player who bounced between St. Petersburg in Russia’s west and Vladivostok in the far, far east (think north of Japan) last season. That moving around wasn’t great for his stats in Buchelnikov’s first full season in the KHL, but he managed to post 29 points in 53 games.
Blah blah blah, get to the point, George? Well, Duff explains that Buchelnikov getting sent to Vityaz was a bit weird given his one-time status as a rising star with SKA, and he notes that the Red Wings have to simply cross their fingers that the young man who stands at 5’10” and 170 pounds wants to come over to North America so that he can be assessed properly:
Buchelnikov was a 13-goal scorer in the KHL last season with Admiral, a team he was sent to on loan by SKA St. Petersburg. Does he have NHL potential? The fact of the matter is that at this stage of his development, no one can say for sure.
The Red Wings brass can’t get into Russia to see Buchelnikov play in person. And since Russia is under ban from international competition, there’s no chance to measure him against his peers on the international stage.
So what can the Red Wings do to determine how Buchelnikov is progressing until his contract with Vityaz is up in 2025? Get first-hand reports from their Russian scout, and watch as many games as necessary on streaming services:
They rely on reports from Russian scout Nikolai Vakourov and what they can stream from the KHL.
“The Russian we do have, we have a scout in Russia,” Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman said. “He’s there, he’s Russian, he knows the players, he does all of our legwork in Russia. He gets to know all the players on and off the ice.
“As a league, we’re fortunate, or I guess, in the world with the Internet now and that we can virtually get every single game. It’s not ideal, but we can get any game and watch these kids play. We can watch just their shifts. We can watch anything and specify it. So that’s very helpful.
Continued; Buchelnikov actually conducted an interview with Vityaz’s website, but when you plug it into Google Translate, it’s quite garbled.
Buchelnikov is asked what it will be like to play on the team’s first or second line, he talks about his rookie season and avoiding a “sophomore slump,” and he does say that he’s retained a strength and conditioning coach to improve his skating.
I did see an undated photo of Buchelnikov on Twitter, working out with Red Wings prospects in North America, but who knows when that was taken…
And the TL;DR of this story is pretty simple: the Wings believe that Buchelnikov is a tremendously talented young forward, but they’re not really going to know what they’ve got until or unless he decides to “cross the pond.”
And as Duff suggests, last year’s loan from SKA to Admiral Vladivostok and now the move from SKA to Vityaz…It’s pretty weird given how highly-regarded Buchelnikov was two years ago (and it ought to have Buchelnikov singing Johnny Cash’s “I’ve been everywhere“).
When you compare a kid to Artemi Panarin, and then you jerk his chain and move him from Russia’s west coast to its east coast, and then back, it’s all very weird.
For the Red Wings, the sooner Buchelnikov gets out of Russia, the better, because they can develop the young forward’s on-ice skills and off-ice game under their own supervision. Especially with the war in Ukraine going on, he’s sort of out there in the wilderness, and the Wings can only hope and cross their fingers that he harbors dreams of playing in the NHL.
Player development isn’t often linear regardless of the leagues we’re talking about, but in Buchelnikov’s case, it’s been a real zigzag in the uncomfortable sense of the term. He’s only 20, so he’s got a lot of time left to become an NHL player, but it’s going to take some seasoning over here before that happens.
