46 goals and 96 points in the NHL doesn’t quite match up with KHL Rookie Of The Year and Playoff MVP over in Russia, at least to a few people.
60 Russian authors, commentators, and bloggers took a survey voting on the best Russian hockey players from last season. The result was one of the wildest player ranking lists I’ve seen in recent memory.
Ilya Nabokov received two first place votes, the third most received by any player in the survey. Those two votes are a big reason why he ended up being rated the 5th best Russian player in the world last season, above Minnesota Wild star Kirill Kaprizov. The people taking part in the survey were able to vote on any player from any league they wanted to vote for as long as they had Russian citizenship.
Listen, Nabokov had a fantastic season. Following up a .930 save percentage in the regular season with a .942 in the playoffs while leading your team to a championship is nothing to scoff at, but the KHL and the NHL are very different leagues. Kaprizov finished 11th in the NHL in scoring on a team where he doesn’t have a ton of help around him. It’s pretty clear that they think highly of their league over in Russia, as Nikita Gusev, who led the KHL in scoring but struggled to stick in the NHL, also finished ahead of Kaprizov.
What’s funny is that Nabokov was the highest rated KHL player in the “Best Hockey Player” category, but when it came to the “Best KHL Player,” he finished fourth. I can’t make sense of it, but it is what it is.
Valeri Nichushkin ended up finishing 12th in the voting for best Russian last season. Something tells me he would have finished a little higher if not for how the season ended, but kind of hard to overlook that.
When it came to voting on the best goalie, Nabokov finished third behind Igor Shesterkin and Sergei Bobrovsky. That puts him ahead of the likes of Andrei Vasilevsky and Ilya Sorokin, who didn’t exactly have the best seasons of their careers. Because of that, I can actually get on board with that ranking. If Nabokov is able to have a similar season to what he did last year, the hype for him back in Russia might be out of control.
Alexander Georgiev finished in 12th, as he got one third place vote.
When it came to voting on the best U-20 player in Russia, Avalanche first rounder Mikhail Gulyayev came in at 8th place, and even got one first place vote.