Filatov was drafted by Columbus and instead of sending him to juniors to develop they kept him in the NHL then sent him to the AHL. I still think had Columbus sent him down to juniors for a year he'd have been a much better player.
Filatov couldn't be sent to juniors when he first came over to North America. There was all sorts of issue with getting a transfer. Once Sudbury finally got everything clear for him to play in the OHL, it was the end of November and Filatov was scoring a little below a point a game in the AHL. It made no sense for him to be sent to the OHL when he was doing so well in the AHL.
Here's the Filatov Watch thread from 2008 from Sudbury fan forum:
http://forum.icedogfans.com/showthread.php?t=3400. It has some articles that explained what was going on. Filatov was cleared by the Russians to play in the NHL or AHL, but not junior hockey.
Part of the problem was things did come easily in the beginning, so there was no motivation for Filatov to actually change what he was doing. When he struggled, he blamed other people, rather than realize that what worked in junior hockey wasn't going to work in the NHL.
His NHL hat trick is often mentioned as to his potential, but that came during a high scoring game that was not anything typical you would see usually in the NHL. Expecting that type of scenario to happen regularly is crazy, but I think Filatov's ego got inflated from that and he wanted it to always be that easy.
In the AHL, he was getting so many points by cherry picking, by floating and on the power play. He didn't have to work all that hard to average a point a game, but that also didn't help get him ready for the NHL.
Had he been sent to the OHL where he would have been able to float, cherry pick, slack and put up tons of points, how would that have helped him develop? He would have been playing against weaker competition.
The NHL was the best place for him to actually face competition and see that he needed to get better. And he was improving. The incident that was the beginning of the end of Filatov's NHL career was the hit during the game against the Sharks. Maybe he had a concussion from that hit, but his style of play became so much more timid after that. Up until then, he seemed to try to play more of the NHL style game. After that, he was all perimeter.