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Like most teams, the Canucks haven’t found a late-round gem in a long time. Could Kirill Kudryavtsev, their 2022 seventh-rounder, defy the odds?
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Published Jul 05, 2024 • Last updated 13 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Vancouver Canucks’ Kirill Kudryavtsev (29) reaches for the puck while being checked by William Lockwood (7) during the NHL hockey team’s training camp in Whistler, B.C., Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Photo by DARRYL DYCK /THE CANADIAN PRESS
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In the long, mostly underwhelming, history of Vancouver Canucks draft picks, there just aren’t a lot of seventh-round, let alone late-round, picks that have made it.
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In the two decades that the NHL Entry Draft has been just seven rounds, only two players picked that late have played NHL games: Aidan McDonough and Mario Bliznak.
Both managed six games for the Canucks. Both scored a goal.
But both, in the end, fizzled out.
It’s hard to make the NHL. There are plenty of players who prove to be competent professionals, but that alone isn’t enough to stick in The Show.
Even the run-of-the-mill NHLers have to be special at lower levels. Special in some way.
And that’s the question that springs to mind when looking at 2022 Vancouver Canucks seventh-rounder Kirill Kudryavtsev.
The 20-year-old defenceman does lots of things well. He certainly can handle the puck — he’s been a very productive blueliner across three seasons for the Soo Greyhounds in the OHL — and he’s a smart defender, who has shown a growing adeptness for the finer points of gap control.
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Playing quicker and playing closer to teammates and to opponents was a big focus for him this past season.
“The biggest thing I’d say I was trying this season, to be closer to the guys on the forecheck and in the neutral zone, and on my gap,” he said Thursday, following the final on-ice session of this year’s Canucks development camp. “Get better to just kill more plays at the blue line and to then be better at transition plays. I feel like that’s going to help a lot in the NHL.”
The NHL, obviously, is the dream. And it terms of understanding the game, it’s clear he’s got it.
But can he translate all this to the quicker pace of the AHL, and then NHL? That’s now the task in front of him.
“Decently mobile and skilled, and he’s actually developed into a really capable defender, but I’ve just come to view him as a jack of all trades, master of none player. Lacks that separating skill or standout dimension around which to build an NHL game,” Elite Prospects editor J.D. Burke told Postmedia.
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Burke’s assessment, in the end, reflects Kudryavtsev’s reality as a seventh-round pick.
In the old days, seventh-round picks often did have some interesting point of difference, surrounded by flaws. But the draft has become a true reflection of talent-sorting, with how the players in the past fell to the late rounds because teams feared their small stature — Henrik Zetterberg perhaps the most famous, extreme example — or their playing pedigree, like Jannik Hansen, who the Canucks drafted in the ninth round in 2004, the last year the draft was more than seven rounds.
Players from Denmark were a rare thing in those days, and so Hansen, who clearly had pro potential, fell a long way.
“He’s a fun enough player, all things being relative,” Burke said.
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Relative is the important word.
As it stands, he looks set to be one of eight defencemen on the Abbotsford Canucks’ roster next season, and that’s going to be the biggest challenge of his career, without doubt.
He will be the youngest defenceman on the roster and one of only two with no professional experience. Christian Felton will be the other. Felton is 24 and comes to the AHL with four years of NCAA hockey under his belt.
That said, youth is on Kudryavtsev’s side. Along with fellow 20-year-old Elias Pettersson, he’s still got room to grow his game. Most players peak around age 23 or 24 — other than Pettersson and Kudryavtsev, every other defenceman on the Abbotsford roster will be at least 23.
Cole McWard and Jett Woo are both 23 and are pretty much what they’re going to be as professionals. McWard has had a taste of NHL hockey and Canucks GM Patrik Allvin talked him up just a few weeks ago as a player who he hopes will play more NHL games next year. Woo had a couple of brief tastes of the NHL experience this past season, although he never played a game.
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A prospect’s standing on the depth chart can change quickly. Older players such as Guillaume Brisebois, Christian Wolanin and Akito Hirose are pretty much known quantities at this point. They have managed NHL minutes, but they are no longer anything more than competent fillers if they do get an NHL call.
For Kudryavtsev, the time is now to show he can still grow his game, still speed it up. If he does manage to defy the odds, he could be an intriguing prospect over the next couple of seasons.
pjohnston@postmedia.com
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Courtesy : https://theprovince.com/sports/hockey/nhl/vancouver-canucks/canucks-should-we-be-talking-about-kirill-kudryavtsev-more