BY ALEX FLETCHER – FAN FUEL BLOGGER
The Ottawa Senators sure haven’t had much luck with Russian hockey players, have they?
Since the lockout, only a handful of Russians have suited up for the team, including youngsters Alexei Kaigorodov, Alexander Nikulin, and Ilya Zubov. Now it appears you can add Nikita Filatov to the list.
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Remember Kaigorodov? He was the team’s long-awaited talented second-line centre that was supposed to help provide quality offensive depth. In the fall of 2006, he averaged under five minutes of ice time and registered one assist in six games with Ottawa before he returned to Russia after being assigned to the AHL’s Binghamton Senators.
Zubov and Nikulin, also centres, both did some time in the minors before realizing they weren’t going to play much in Ottawa and telling management (Nikulin, in the fall of 2008; Zubov, in the fall of 2009) that they intended to head back to Russia if the team wouldn’t trade them.
Now it’s the end of 2011 and there’s another young Russian who’s heading back home.
The Senators, as announced Monday, have assigned Nikita Filatov to CSKA Moscow of the KHL. (Funnily enough, all three of Filatov, Nikulin, and Zubov played for CSKA Moscow in 2009-2010.) Yes, the Senators still hold his rights and it’s entirely possible that he’ll come back to training camp next year and maybe even be a full-time NHL player one day, but it’s tough to like the odds of that happening given the Senators’ track record with Russians and the fact that this is the second time Filatov has left an NHL club to go back to Russia.
It’s tough to blame Filatov for bolting. The team promised him “every opportunity” to succeed when it acquired him over the off-season, and as I argued in November, he never really got a fair shot.
If he were to have stayed with the team all season, he probably would have spent most of his time in the AHL, where his $65,000 salary would have been a fraction of the amount that he will now receive by playing in the KHL.
Monday, head coach Paul MacLean said that Filatov “was in the lineup lots and got to play with our best players”, and MacLean and general manager Bryan Murray both indicated that Filatov didn’t score and bring as much offence to the team as he was supposed to.
Filatov wasn’t exactly “in the lineup lots”, though. The longest consecutive set of games he played in was four, during which time he recorded just 28 total minutes of ice time, mostly on the fourth line alongside the likes of Erik Condra and Jesse Winchester.
According to Behind The Net, a hockey statistics website, it is true, however, that Jason Spezza, arguably the team’s best offensive player, was Filatov’s most common linemate (57% of Filatov’s ice time was spent while Spezza was also on the ice). However, that only lasted for the couple of games that Filatov was actually given decent ice time.
And while the team is right that Filatov didn’t score a goal during preseason or in his first two games, when he was given plenty of opportunities on the top line, he recorded four assists in the total eight games. That’s not bad, and doesn’t it seem a little harsh to completely give up on a skilled player because of that output? Lots of offensive players go through scoring slumps, but they break out of them eventually. Filatov might have, too.
And there are other ways to justify Filatov’s discontentedness. Youngsters Bobby Butler, Stephane Da Costa, and David Rundblad have struggled mightily at times this season, but each of them has played more than twice as many games as Filatov did before leaving for Russia.
But then again, maybe this relationship is far from over. Maybe fans should look at another year in Russia as just another year of development rather than the end of a potential NHL career – Filatov is just 21 years old, after all. The team was confident that fellow 21-year-old Senators prospect Jakob Silfverberg could have played in the NHL this season, but he decided to stay in Sweden for another year and no one is complaining about that. What is so different about this situation?
Maybe we just have a bias against Russian hockey players. Alexei Yashin’s contract disputes sure didn’t help, and other than Anton Volchenkov, has there ever been a Russian Senator that fans really, truly liked?
Maybe we’re all just overreacting and Filatov will come back next year and prove to be a successful NHLer.
Whatever happens, we will eventually find out if Filatov is just another Kaigorodov/Nikulin/Zubov, or a… umm… I’ve got nothing.
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