Kravtsov has had a terrible season. Even coming back to the AHL, he's not produced as he should have. He's had some games where he shows a good amount of skill and that he's clearly a talented player, but its not consistent. You could discount his AHL numbers before he went back to the KHL, and they still aren't good. Kravtsov would be age-eligible for the AHL, if he was coming from junior hockey. For a top ten pick forward to not even be averaging .5PPG in the AHL at this point, I think thats not acceptable.
I think the kid is talented, but he's trending towards bust territory, in my opinion. If we can call Andersson, whose only about a year older, a bust at this point (and many people are doing that), we can start discussing the possibility with Kravtsov. He needs to start playing a lot better. He's a much more talented player than Andersson, but being talented doesn't guarantee success. His attitude was clearly a problem for a lot of this season, so that's not good. But his consistency isn't there. He shows flashes of talent, but top-ten picks should be playing a lot more consistently than he does in the AHL at age 20.
From what I've seen, and I've seen a number of his AHL games, his on-ice work-ethic isn't very high. He floats a lot. He doesn't forecheck hard, and try to steal pucks. He doesn't go to the net to try to find the puck. He doesn't play with enough pace. His skating speed and technique are at least above-average, but he looks slow out there because he plays at a very slow pace. NA hockey is a quicker pace than the KHL. He's not involved in enough plays because of all of this. He's a complete cherry-picker right now.
I also have noticed that he tries for a lot of highlight-reel toe-drags or moves that will never work, and he wastes scoring chances because of it. You occasionally will see this from other players, but not with any consistency. Other players will use it when it's not expected, and when you can catch the other team off guard. Kravtsov uses it as a staple of his game, and any defense that does their homework on Kravtsov would know that there's a good chance he's going to try something too fancy instead of trying to find the trailing man or driving to the net or taking the shot off the rush. I don't know who taught him that these are acceptable. They look fancy, but he ruins too many scoring chances by doing this.
I ranked this guy pretty high pre-draft. I had him 10th, and we picked him 9th. I wanted to pick a defenseman, but I didn't hate the pick. I thought Kravtsov had a lot of potential, but what I've seen since being drafted hasn't been very good. He needs to turn it around. This team can't go two drafts in a row drafting busts. Thats an easy way to ruin a rebuild.
