Something to consider regarding Guryanov's numbers/icetime in his first full season: Barring a few exceptions, rookies don't get top 6 icetime in the Russia/the KHL, even in cases where the team is a hot pile of garbage (like Lada is this season). As some have pointed out, a lot of his goals have come from sheer determination, which is awesome to see considering how wicked his shot is.
I get that some people would want to point to say, Tarasenko's KHL numbers for comparison. In doing this, there's an important thing to consider with him, which is that his rookie season, 2009-10, was also his father Andrei's first season as head coach of the team. This gave him Vladimir top line minutes and enabled his rapid development as an offensive force in the KHL. Having a parent in a coaching, managerial etc position goes a long way over there in terms of getting you priority ice time. If you read Dave King's book "King of Russia" which covers his first season as the first North American coach in (it was at the time the KHL predecessor) the Russian Superleague; you read him talk about the problems he had with management in that he refused to give priority icetime to a son of one of the team's higher ups. He refused because there were better players on the team, and this behavior by him was considered almost offensive. It doesn't surprise me to see that a team like Lada is sticking the old ways of giving veterans priority no matter what.
Obviously there are a handful of young Russian KHL'ers to compare to but the above is just one example that I wanted to use given that I've seen Tarasenko's name pop up on here in Guryanov discussions.
It is a huge disappointment that he got cut from the Russian team, I know a lot of us would have loved to have gotten a fresh look at him playing against his peers.
