Toronto Maple Leafs Prospect Nikita Korostelev Curiously Saw His KHL Rights Traded on Friday to Hometown Moscow
Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Nikita Korostelev curiously saw his KHL rights traded on Friday from Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg to CSKA Moskva (Moscow).
One could be forgiven for missing this very minor piece of news out of Russia; after all, the only way one would find the information are those who closely follow the Kontinental Hockey League, or like us, happened to stumble across the information by chance while searching Russia’s pro league for other reasons.
Nikita Korostelev, 19, fell to 185th overall (7th round) in 2015 after scouts pegged the Russian winger as a 2nd/3rd rounder. He just concluded his third season of OHL hockey with Sarnia in 2015-16, racking up 23 goals (42 points) in the process.
What you probably don’t know about the Leafs prospect is that he made the jump to North America where he was only 14 years old. He was basically living on his own playing for Vaughan Kings AAA at the very beginning.
"via Yahoo Sports,“It was hard at first, being a 14-year-old, living by myself in a house with a couple other guys on my team,” says Korostelev, whom the Sting took No. 9 overall in last spring’s priority selection. “Then my parents [father Dmitriy and mother Natalia] started to come, about half the time, more so last year. I’m completely fine with where I am now.”"
Playing Conspiracy Theorist
Now it’s not uncommon for the KHL to draft North American talent that has little chance of ever joining the team – seeing as Nikita is set to re-join OHL Sarnia this upcoming season and participating in Toronto Maple Leafs rookie camp/tournament.
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Remember when Connor McDavid was selected late in the KHL draft in the months leading up to his actual NHL selection? At the same, these selections can see their rights traded (similar to Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Nikita Korostelev) in transactions that are barely news worthy.
This one has a different feel for a few reasons though:
The most obvious is the Russian factor, something teams must always be wary about with the ever-growing KHL.
Perhaps more important though, based on his ties to Moscow, this a brilliant business decision. CSKA Moskva can use his birthplace/hometown where he played youth hockey for Belye Medvedi Moskva as leverage. Not only that, you offer him a sense of comfort to be around friends and family while making a lucrative living playing hockey.
Lastly, CSKA Moskva clearly recognizes that the odds are stacked against Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Nikita Korostelev. He certainly has the tools/skill-set to emerge as one of those late-round gems, but the pool of youngsters is so deep that he would need leapfrog a number of promising players.
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Can he outplay Kasperi Kapanen, Jeremy Bracco, Connor Brown, Tobias Lindberg, Zach Hyman, Nikita Soshnikov, Brendan Leipsic, Andreas Johnson, and Dmytro Timashov (just to name some of the competition at wing)? It seems Moscow is betting they can offer a better all-around situation for Toronto’s 7th round selection.
Obviously, this nothing more than pure speculation based on Friday’s news. Gotta tell ya though folks, it reminds me of that old saying, “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck”.