If someone went to Moscow and asked a Russian citizen to name their greatest hockey players, they would probably cite current stars like Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Ilya Kovalchuk along with greats such as Pavel Datsyuk and Sergei Fedorov. Panarin has the statistics, skill set and team around him to be mentioned as one of the Russian greats one day.
Currently, with age taken into account, Panarin was one of the best, if not the best Russian in the NHL last year. Tons of people would take him to start a franchise and lead them to a Cup, and hopefully he can add a Stanley Cup to his resume with New York to become more of an icon, not only in Mother Russia, but here in the Big Apple.