Anthony Mauro
DraftBuzz Hockey
VladNYC said:With out a doubt. It's not like this is the first time a Russian player has been picked well below his skill level. I will once again refer to Pavel Datsyuk as a CLASSIC example of NHL scouts evaluating Russian prospects.
6th round pick! What a joke.
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/nhl1998e.html
With sooooo many superstars above him, how did he even get picked?
Look at all these great Centers picked over him in the first and second round alone.
Manny Malhotra
Eric Chouinard
Milan Kraft
Artem Chubarov
Blair Betts
Chris Nielsen
Christian Berglund
Justin Papineau
I mean who needs Datsyuk when u have Chubarov.
Some times i think these scouts just pick the Russian names out of a hat and if they can pronounce it, he gets picked in one of the last rounds as a "Ehh what the hell" kind of thing.
What separates Kulemin from a Staal is that he's nearly two years and two months older. That means his draft was two years ago and he's obviously more mature than most if not all prospects this year. If Nikolai was an '88, then hell yea he'd be a top three pick...but he's more or less taken that step forward and approached his peak.