The reason why so many Russian kids got picked (higher) this year by taking advantage of opportunities to showcase in the KHL.
Yeah, and I also must say that it was a bit due because like last year, after the top guys, many were easily picked like a round after when compareables from other countries got picked.
In the past Russia did produce many 1 sided prospects. Kids more skilled than the rest, but with more issues in other areas. The kids that weren’t skilled were more PF types. The reason for that is quite simple, say 15 years ago the kids trained more but didn’t have the junior/2nd tier hockey route that kept up with compareable programs. When Sweden played Russia in a WJC, they always did some thing a bit worse than the rest and some other things a bit better.
As a result, many drafts of Russians were a bit front heavy and most picks after the top 15-30 were boom/bust type of picks.
But this just isn’t the case anymore. The VHL/MHL are functioning much better, they are doing a much better job, it’s obviously more competitive. In short, kids playing in those leagues just have much fewer issues than they had 15 years ago.
There are zero objective reasons for why a Yegor Spiridonov should be picked like 3 rounds after a John Beecher which happened last year.
