Nail Yakupov took a seat at the head of a table in a conference room and was the object of scrutiny from a dozen veteran hockey men for an NHL team that would love to have him on the roster. It could be any team in the league, but this was one of the first of not quite two dozen that brought him into their respective suites for 20-minute interviews at the draft combine in Toronto. Yakupov was composed, his grey suit unwrinkled, and not a bead of sweat trespassed on his brow. Those at the table knew the basics of his story: He’s the son of a coach hailing from Tatarstan, hardly a hotbed of hockey in the Russian federation of states; like many Tatars he’s a practising Muslim; he tore up the Ontario Hockey League during the past couple of seasons and broke Sarnia Sting scoring records set by Steven Stamkos; and he impressed at the world juniors as a draft-eligible kid, no mean feat. There weren’t a lot of blanks in his personal history to fill in, really. The team’s execs just wanted to get a bit of a read on the player they consider to be the most talented of the 2012 draft class. They lobbed mostly banal questions at him, the usual stuff every team asks. What type of player are you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? There wasn’t much to glean from that. They, like everyone else, already thought he was a hell of a talent.
Near the end of the 20 minutes, the head amateur scout asked offhand what his plans were for the summer. “I’ll skate with my KHL team,” he said. At that point an air raid siren went off, red flashing lights shot beams from corners of the room and the sprinklers showered everyone in attendance. A stuffed duck dropped from the ceiling on a wire with a card in its bill and Groucho Marx emerged from the wings, intoning: “You’ve said the secret acronym.”
OK, the paragraph above is a writer’s embellishment. Yakupov’s mention of his Kontinental Hockey League team produced a raised eyebrow or two and exchanged glances among the staffers, but everything pretty much stayed in place. The alarm, however, was tripped at the psychic level.
Interviews at the combine are occasions for prospects to try to say what teams want to hear. This often, but not always, intersects with the truth. Agents have told the kids what questions to expect, rehearsed the interview with them. For those who are trying to shore up messy back stories, it’s a pressure-filled couple of days. Yakupov has no issues in his past—his immediate future is the pressing question.
In ordinary circumstances, a tour of the teams’ suites at the Westin for a guy like Yakupov would have had all the tension of a victory lap. To a man, the fraternity of NHL scouts regards Yakupov as the biggest, brightest talent in the 2012 draft class. In fact, more than a few scouts would’ve taken him with the first pick in 2011, had he been eligible. They rate him more NHL-ready than most first-overall picks, including the likes of Patrick Kane and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. All things being equal, Nail Yakupov would be the first pick in most drafts. All things being equal, he’d step into the NHL next season. This June, though, not all things are equal, and the inequality of it all is through no fault of his own.
What should be a clear-cut decision for the Edmonton Oilers, the lucky team that won the draft lottery, is complicated by several questions. No. 1: Will the NHL avoid a lockout? No one at the combine was optimistic. If history repeats itself and the season is either abbreviated or snuffed out entirely, it would leave Yakupov seemingly without a place to play in the fall, at least a place befitting his talent. He has nothing to prove by going back to Sarnia and again dominating the OHL. As a CHL player he could not be assigned to the American Hockey League. In either case, he’d be marking time. Question No. 2: Will the KHL step into the lockout’s breach and try to sign Yakupov to a contract? Every exec at the combine is certain that the KHL will make plays for Yakupov and his countryman Mikhail Grigorenko of the Quebec Remparts, NHL Central Scouting’s third-ranked skater in North America.
Over the past few seasons, rumours have floated suggesting the KHL would take a run at the best and biggest names from the Motherland. Evgeni Malkin was the target at one time. And even though Alexander Ovechkin is seemingly locked up by Washington in perpetuity, he made noises about going back to Russia if the NHL bails out of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. When Ilya Kovalchuk hit the market as an unrestricted free agent a couple of years ago, he was supposedly in line for a deal worth as much as $15 million a season tax-free in Russia. None of it came to pass. Yes, Alexei Yashin and Sergei Fedorov went back, but they’re more than a decade removed from their primes.
That’s not to say that the KHL’s ambitions have disappeared. According to an NHL executive with extensive experience in Russia, the KHL and its president, Alexander Medvedev, have recalibrated their plans. “It’s driven by the Olympics,” the exec says. “They’re looking to target younger players, those who project to be national team players in two seasons. It’s not financially viable—you’re talking about small arenas in the KHL, half-filled, and people spending $10 or $20 for tickets. But it doesn’t have to make sense money-wise. It has the support of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, and the state will cover the losses, at least until the Olympics. And it might not seem to make sense to players—money aside, the quality of life is better in the NHL—but they know their chances of an invitation to the Russian team in Sochi are better if they stay home.”
While Yakupov was making the rounds at the combine, Vladimir Tarasenko, one of the top young Russians in the KHL, agreed to terms with the St. Louis Blues, who picked him in the first round of the 2010 draft. Still, Evgeny Kuznetsov, a name and talent as big as Tarasenko, committed to two more years with Chelyabinsk. He made it clear that the Olympics outweighed the prospect of playing with Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. Asked about the attraction of the Olympics and a place on his national team, Yakupov does his best to defuse a loaded question. “I’m not a Russian,” he says. “I’m a Tatar.”
Even with the Olympics as a secondary motive, some NHL scouts can envision Yakupov having compelling reasons to go to the KHL. “You could hardly begrudge the kid if he wanted to go to Russia, make a few million bucks and work on his game, if the only other option is another year in Sarnia,” one NHL scouting director says. “It’s not quite that clear with Grigorenko. He’s a pretty slight kid. Physically he might not be ready to move up. Yakupov is.” The KHL wouldn’t sign Yakupov to a contract allowing him to jump to the NHL when it reopens for business after a lockout. Not to a one-year deal either. If he signed a KHL contract it would be like Kuznetsov’s, and stretch through 2014 and the Olympics.
No team would be in love with the prospect of going without any contribution from a first-overall pick for two seasons, especially with the risk of injury. But that’s not the worst risk in the scenario. Because Yakupov played in the CHL last season, any NHL team that drafts him will have two seasons to sign him to a deal, even if he goes back to Russia. The ugliest prospect of all: If the NHL team that drafts him doesn’t sign him by the spring of 2014, it would lose his rights and he’d re-enter the draft. You could tap the best player with your precious pick and have nothing to show for it.
Off the record, executives at the combine were of one mind about the draft: There will be significant picks moving around. Yakupov isn’t a great fit for Edmonton at No. 1, as the Oilers’ needs lie elsewhere. If GM Steve Tambellini doesn’t or can’t move the pick, he might draft defenceman Ryan Murray, who’s ranked behind Yakupov on Central Scouting’s list. And if Yakupov were still available for Columbus as holders of the second overall pick, Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson would be left in a complete jam. Columbus was set back when Nikolay Zherdev (fourth overall in 2003) bolted back to the KHL and again when Nikita Filatov (sixth in ’08) balked at his AHL assignment and was eventually traded to Ottawa.
Igor Larionov, the Hockey Hall of Famer, represents Yakupov and was putting out fires at the combine, saying his player is “interested only in the NHL.” That in itself is enough to calm some. “If Igor says that [Yakupov] is going to stay in North America, I trust him,” says one scouting director.
Teams that talked to Yakupov came away with favourable impressions, even if they couldn’t help but read deeper and darker meanings into his simplest statements. Says Yakupov: “I skate with my hometown team just to practise and get in condition.” Maybe.
That almost two dozen teams interviewed Yakupov, who should be No. 1 or, at worst, No. 2, is proof almost conclusive that those picks will be in play if they aren’t already. In recent years the first overall pick has been clear-cut, and where he ends up likewise. This year, no one’s sure which team, or even which continent, he’ll be on.
This article originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine.