Learning a lesson from Nichushkin

Many NHL teams make mistakes in how they handle their young players.  Top ten picks get rushed to the NHL.  A player just out of his teens doesn’t produce and he is regarded as a failure.  It’s happened over and over and the New York Rangers are no exception.

In the first round for four years from 2017 to 2020 the Rangers drafted Lias Andersson, Filip Chytil, Vitali Kravtsov, K’Andre Miller, Nils Lundkvist, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafrenière and Braden Schneider.  All of them have seen NHL action and it’s easy to argue that it happened too soon.

How many players drafted in those years have made it to the NHL?  Look at the numbers:

• 31 of 217 players drafted in 2017 have played in 100 NHL games.
• 17 of 217 players drafted in 2018 have played in 100 NHL games.
• 15 of 217 players drafted in 2019 have played in 50 NHL games.
• 10 of 2017 players drafted in 2020 have played in 40 NHL games.

Yet, Chytil (2017) has played 253 games, third most of his draft class.  K’Andre Miller (2018) has played 135 games, 10th most.  Kaapo Kakko (2019) has played in 157 games, second only to Jack Hughes. Alexis Lafrenière (2020) has played the most games (135) of his draft class and Braden Schneider (2020) has played in 43 games, 10th most of the same class and second only to Jamie Drysdale among defensemen. .

The Rangers rushed Lias Andersson to the NHL and when he failed it fractured their relationship with him.  Same goes for Vitali Kravtsov, who had expectations that he would be an NHL player at age 19 and left the organization to go home to Russia when that didn’t happen.

Meanwhile, it has taken Filip Chytil fully five seasons in North America with four of them in the NHL for him to finally begin taking the steps towards being the player the Rangers thought that they had stolen 21st overall in the 2017 Draft.

Kaapo Kakko has had to endure injuries and is already seeing his name bandied about as portential trade bait because he has failed to live up expectations.

Alexis Lafrenière has been able to progress despite playing fewer minutes and getting less special teams play than his top draft pick peers.  Still, most fans would be critical when rating how the 20-year-old has done.

The fact that the Rangers haven’t screwed up the development of K’Andre Miller and Braden Schneider by rushing them into the NHL when they were just 20 years old is somewhat miraculous and is due to their extraordinary talent.

The stock of Nils Lundkvist has dropped since he came to North America.  Never mind that they thrust the 21-year-old into a starting role on the team despite the fact that he had not played on an NHL sized rink in his career in Sweden.  His 25 game NHL audition has been rated a failure and the fact that he was one of the best young defensemen in Sweden has been forgotten.

And that brings us Valeri Nichushkin.

The Nichushkin saga

Valeri Nichushkin was drafted 10th overall in the First Round of the 2013 NHL Entry Draft by the Dallas Stars.  File that date, 2013, away somewhere.  Of course, he was rushed to the NHL as an 18-year old and had a good season, scoring 14 goals and 34 points. The right wing had hip surgery the next season and was limited to only eight games.

In 2015-16, at the ripe old age of 20, he came back to score nine goals and 29 points while still recuperating from major surgery.  The following season, unhappy with the Dallas offer, he returned to Russia for two years in the KHL.

He came back to the NHL for good in 2018-19 and made headlines by not scoring a goal in all 57 games he played, in fact, going 91 consecutive games without scoring a goal.  Vilified in Dallas, the Stars bought out the final year of the 24-year-old’s two-year $2.95 million contract.

Colorado’s Joe Sakic signed him to a one year deal for $850k, a signing that raised some eyebrows around the league.  He responded with a 14 goal, 26 point season and was rewarded with a two-year deal for $2.5 million per year.  He scored 10 goals in the shortened season last year and this year scored 25 goals and 52 points and added nine goals en route to winning a Stanley Cup.  Finally, in 2022 at age 27, Valeri Nichushkin has become a star.

Not only that, he played in the Stanley Cup Final with a foot injury so severe, he needed medical assistance to get his skate on.

He was in the running for the Conn Smythe Trophy and many Avalanche teammates called him their best player in the postseason.

So what?

So, why should we care?  Let’s go back to that 2013 date.  It took Nichushkin nine years after was drafted to become the player that everyone expected he was supposed to be.  He’s not an exception.

Nathan MacKinnon was the top pick that same year.  He averaged 18.7 goals per season until he finally broke out with 39 goals in 2017-18, when he was 22 years old and fully five years after he was drafted.

Leon Draisaitl was the third overall pick in 2014, but people forget he scored only two goals in 37 games his rookie season and didn’t get over 30 goals until his fifth season in the NHL at age 23.

It took J.T. Miller eight seasons to become a point-a-game player for the Canucks after being drafted by the Rangers in the first round in 2011.  With 15 goals total over his first three seasons, he became a 20-goal scorer in 2016 for New York.  Steve Yzerman knew what he was getting when he insisted on including Miller in Tampa’s deadline deal in 2018.   This year, at age 29, he was a 99-point player for Vancouver.

And what about Pavel Buchnevich who frustrated Ranger fans for four full years before finally breaking out in 2020-21? At 26 years old, he scored 30 goals this year for the Blues and is a fixture on their top line.

Moritz Seider was the Calder Trophy winner this season finishing ahead of Trevor Zegras and Michael Bunting. Seider (6th overall)  and Zegras (9th overall) were both drafted in 2019 while Bunting was a 2014 pick.  Kaapo Kakko was drafted the same year as Seider and Zegras and has played three full NHL seasons while they just completed their rookie campaigns.

There is no doubt that  the additional seasoning for Seider and Zegras got them to the level where they were Calder Trophy finalists three years after they were drafted.

Expectations

Was rushing all of these Rangers first round picks to the NHL so quickly a mistake?  Not if the organization and their fans give them the time to develop.  For Lafrenière, Kakko, Chytil, Schneider and Miller to go through the war of attrition know as the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year will make them better players in the  future.

Their experience this season in getting to the Conference Finals was invaluable and next time they will know what to expect and will be better players because of it.

The key for the Rangers (and their fans) is patience.  If you rush players to the NHL, you must be prepared to put up with a huge learning curve. And for all of you who have been crucifying Filip Chytil’s lack of scoring or proclaiming Kakko, Lafrenière and Lundkvist as draft busts, or criticizing Miller as “soft,” you must remember that none of them, I repeat, none of them are older then 22.

It took Valeri Nichushkin nine years that included hip surgery, a return to Russia, a bought out contract and a last chance to succeed at the league minimum salary before he finally made it.  That’s a long time, but even so, Dallas must be regretting how they handled him.

The fact that Vitali Kravtsov signed so early with the Rangers and cannot be sent to the minor leagues without clearing waivers is hopefully a sign that the team believes he has a future in New York.

The performance of the Kid Line in the playoffs is hopefully a sign that these three young players are ready to take the next step in the NHL careers.

The future is bright. Have patience and hopefully there will be no regrets about giving up on a young player too soon.

One last story.  The Rangers draft a center named Dave Gagner 12th overall in 1983.  Undersized at 5’10” and 188 pounds,  he struggled in parts of three seasons in New York, scoring 11 goals in 80 games.  The Rangers gave up on the 23-year old, trading him to Minnesota for two average defensemen. Regrets?  After an eight-goal first season with the North Stars he exploded offensively, averaging 35 goals a year for six seasons including two 40-goal seasons.  He ended up playing 946 NHL games, scoring 318 goals and 719 points.

That’s what happens when you give up on a player too soon.