March 3, 2009
Howe and Why
Russian Elite League

by Robert Vollman

In the 1988 and 1989 NHL Entry Draft, 11 teams selected 21 Russian League players. 5 of those were selected by the Quebec Nordiques, 2 more than the three next teams. Did these four players and the Russian goalie plucked from CSKA Moscow hold the key to turning their franchise around?

Player    Age GP  G  A PTS PIM
   
Center     29 87 33 50  84  36    
Right Wing 28 92 48 30  78  36    
Left Wing  23 91 44 30  74  70    
Defenseman 25 81  8  6  14  65

Unfortunately in 1989 there was very little way of knowing what to expect based on these two-year totals from the Russian League. We had seen some Russian players compete in International tournaments, but we had never seen any compete in the NHL. Have the Nordiques found a line of 30 goal scorers that are capable of stepping in for Peter Stastny and Michel Goulet?

Fortunately, times have changed and we’ve seen many players compete in both the Russian Elite League and the NHL in the past twenty years. In the last two NHL seasons alone we’ve seen 24 players who have played at least 20 games in both the NHL, and in the Russian Elite League. Now we can take a look at players like Nikolai Kulemin, Evgeny Artyukhin, and Viktor Tikhonov and make relatively informed appraisals of their two-year performances in Russia.

Player          Age NHL  GP  G  A PTS PIM
    
Nikolai Kulemin  22 Tor 111 48 24  72 108    
Evgeny Artyukhin 25 TB   67  8 14  22 282    
Viktor Tikhonov  20 Pho  47  6  6  12  43

We can translate a player’s performance in the Russian Elite League to an NHL equivalent. A good starting point for this process is to too look at the players who have played in both leagues. The first section covers the Russian League, while the latter half covers the NHL.

Player                GP  G  A PTS PIM  GP  G A  PTS PIM
    
Oleg Saprykin         57 29 20  49 121  71 15 21  36  58    
Jan Bulis             57 17 31  48 106  79 12 11  23  70    
Denis Arkhipov       105 18 26  44  50  79 10 17  27  54    
Nils Ekman            57 22 24  43  87  34  6  9  15  24    
Alexander Perezhogin  50 21 20  41  42  61  6  9  15  48    
Petr Cajanek          33 13 20  33  56  77 15 33  48  54    
Stanislav Chistov     47 11 22  33  95  61  5  8  13  36    
Karel Rachunek        45 11 20  31  73 113 10 29  39  78    
Mikhail Grabovski     48 10 18  28  28  27  3  6   9   8    
Anton Babchuk         57  9 15  24  30  52  2 12  14  30    
Enver Lisin           63 13  7  20  44  30  5  2   7  22    
Dmitry Afanasenkov    45 13  6  19  56  74 11 10  21  20    
Jamie Heward          53  2 15  17  98  71  6 18  24  47    
Oleg Tverdovsky       43  6 11  17  61  26  0  4   4  10    
Denis Grebeshkov      47  8  8  16  79  71  3 15  18  22    
Jan Hejda             50  3 13  16  58 120  1 21  22  81    
Nikita Alexeev        77  9  6  15  36  78 12 11  23  12    
Mark Giordano         50  4  9  13  89  48  7  8  15  36    
Tony Salmelainen      29  3  4   7   2  57  6 11  17  26    
Darius Kasparaitis    33  1  4   5  83  24  2  2   4  30    
Alexei Semenov        22  1  3   4  34  45  1  8   9  64

As a basic rule of thumb, multiplying a Russian Elite League player’s point total by 0.6 generally results in a rate of scoring equal to how they did in the NHL. However, there are exceptions to this rule. You might even recognize the three players that did considerably better in the NHL.

Player          GP  G  A PTS PIM  GP  G   A PTS PIM
    
Alexander Semin 42  8 11  19  78 140 64  51 115 144    
Alexei Yashin   56 16 27  43  63  58 18  32  50  44    
Evgeni Malkin   46 21 26  47  46 160 80 111 191 158

It's clear that penalty minutes seem to be significantly higher in the Russian Elite League. For most players, penalty minutes are cut in half during their time spent in the NHL.

By this measure, here is what Nikolai Kulemin’s career might have looked like if he had been playing in the NHL, adjusting for the longer NHL season. Also included is a straight projection of Kulemin's current season with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Nikolai Kulemin Age GP  G  A PTS PIM
    
2005-06          19 50  5  8  13   6    
2006-07          20 82 25 11  36  32    
2007-08          21 82 18 10  28  47    
2008-09*         22 75 13 17  30  14

Using the future projection techniques we covered last week, we could predict Nikolai Kulemin's numbers for the 2008-09 season. A Similarity Score is created from a database of every NHL player since 1917. From there, the NHL player seasons most similar to Nikolai's 2006-07 and 2007-08 performance are funneled into a formula to create a projection.

Of the 100 most similar players, 19 didn’t play the following season. Of those 19, 14 never played in the NHL again. Keep in mind that in pre-expansion days, 30-35 points a season might not have been good enough for many players to keep their roster spots. Of the 81 that played the following season, the average (normalized to 82 games) was 19 goals, 21 assists, 40 points and 35 penalty minutes, which is only slightly ahead of the pace Kulemin is already on.

As for future potential, perhaps the best-case scenario is Dennis Hull of the Chicago Black Hawks, who went on to score 559 more points. You will probably agree that the Leafs would be mighty happy with a perennial 65-point winger, and their statistics are eerily similar. Hull bagged 30 goals and 64 points in 1968-69!

Dennis Hull Age GP  G  A PTS PIM
   
1964-65      19 55 10  4  14  18    
1965-66      20 25  1  5   6   6    
1966-67      21 70 25 17  42  33    
1967-68      22 74 18 15  33  34

Other successful careers from similar players include Lucien DeBlois, Don Marcotte and Ron Stewart. More contemporary examples include the likes of Fredrik Modin, Richard Zednik and Mark Parrish.

Applying the same techniques to other leagues, such as the Swiss A-League, the AHL, and the Juniors, works well. In fact, translating stats from a player's season or career spanning multiple leagues is also possible, further refining our approach. These translations move us from a general guideline to a more precise estimate of a player's potential.

Here’s the question to ponder for the week: If we were to put together a database of every player in every amateur or professional hockey league in history, with every season translated to NHL equivalency, how significantly would the additional historical information improve our future projections?

Afternote: So what happened with the Quebec Nordiques? The veteran goaltender Sergei Mylnikov ended his career with a very unimpressive 1-7-2, 4.96 GAA NHL season in 1989-90. Two of the forwards, Vyacheslav Bykov and Andrei Khomutov, never played in the NHL. The two other players, however, enjoyed very productive careers helping the franchise win the Stanley Cup in 1996 (but, unfortunately, not until it had moved to another city).

Player             Career  GP   G   A PTS PIM
    
Valeri Kamensky 1991-2002 637 200 301 504 383    
Alexei Gusarov  1990-2001 607  39 128 167 313

Robert Vollman is an author of Hockey Prospectus. You can contact Robert by clicking here or click here to see Robert's other articles.