Since we drafted him I watched a bunch of video on Ishakov. His hands and hockey sense are pretty damn elite. However the dude is SMALL (the irony of making that word bigger). And small doesn't have to necessarily be a problem, but it didn't look like his skating is good enough to overcompensate for that. Maybe he can improve it (and he fills out), but he's got to take the Johnny Gaudreau path if he's going to make the NHL. Not saying he's going to be anywhere near Gaudreau, but he's just so small that he's going to need to use some combination of skating and hockey sense to get open to make plays.
Actually, I can't see him make it at all unless he IS Gaudreau.
Wouldn't shock me if that was legitimate, Ishakov flew under the radar for a lot of fans, myself included.
Seems to me like people who studied his game (Pronman, the Russian guy on HFBoards) came away very impressed with his skills and potential. Have yet to read anything from a scout who studied his game and isn't impressed. Seems like the rest of us are only now catching up after he flew under a lot of our noses.
We can tell ourselves this kind of thing until we're blue in the face.
In general, we have to root for the kid now. No reason not to, and hey, it's not like he doesn't appear to have blatant skill.
For me, the question here is more about "Which relatively safe pick was skipped over to look for a home run with a 5'7", 150 lbs. skilled forward?"
As others have mentioned, I think this type of pick is best saved for round 4, maybe 3 if you know of growing interest among other teams.
We had a Round 2 with LOTS of talent hanging around, and no less than Thomas, Groulx, Olofsson, Hallander, and Gustafsson are kids who look like heavily likely NHL forwards down the road. Ginning and Tychonik are kids I'd LOVED to have added as I'm fairly certain that they'll be future NHLers in some capacity. I'd have totally understood the team taking Durzi, Addison or Bahl at that juncture too. I won't even mention the few 3rd rounders who looked like safer bets, i.e. Wise.
Considering Lou is so new, you've got to think that this was ALL on Snow's staff. Just like Golyshev a few summers back.
In any case, this pick simply smacks of the "Snow" days. And let's be honest - we're still shell-shocked by the Cammaratas of the world. We've spent years discussing how you don't take small skill unless their skating is absolutely exceptional. Hard to tell with Iskhatov. Fortunately, we'll see him at UCONN (not a powerhouse, by any means) next season and can only hope that he immediately makes noise there.
If it had been another round, I'd be ecstatic. I just happen to believe that we decided to take this risk rather than go with some pretty safe talent. Heck, alone the Swedish guys I listed above would have been a wonderful thing to see us add, as I'm pretty sold on them.
