Man of the Week: Philippe Maillet

KHL.ru continues its weekly column with Philippe Maillet. Metallurg’s forward is currently an alternate captain for the Ilya Vorobyov’s men and he’s leading the team with 32 (17+15) points in 39 games played so far.

Magnitka is constantly one of the contenders for the Gagarin Cup – and to reach those heights a team needs strong imports. Philippe Maillet is one of them. In his very first season in our League, the Quebecoise had an impressive showing with 39 (15+24) points in the regular season, with an even more impressive 21 (8+13) in the Gagarin Cup playoffs. This year, he’s being even better – he has already surpassed his goalscoring performance and has all the chances to get to the 50-point mark, especially considering that this year the regular season will count of 68 games.

If sheer numbers aren’t enough, it can be added that Maillet also netted three game-winners for Magnitka, including two straight tallies in early September, in OT against Spartak and in Khabarovsk, respectively.

Early years

Philippe Maillet was born on Nov 7, 1992, in Lachenaie, Quebec, now part of Terrebonne, a suburb of Montreal. Maillet began his youth hockey career with the Collège Esther-Blondin Phénix of the Ligue de hockey Midget AAA du Québec (QMAAA), where he set the franchise record for most assists in a season with 34 in 2008-2009. Following his record-setting season, the forward was drafted by the Victoriaville Tigres of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, but requested to stay in midget AAA in order to develop.

After a successful career with the Tigres, going into the 2012–2013 season, Malliet acknowledged this would be his last in the QMJHL before joining U Sports – the Canadian collegiate league. Malliet led the Tigres in scoring with 83 (25+58) points in 65 games as they qualified for the 2013 QMJHL postseason. The forward competed in eight playoff games, recording nine points, before suffering an ankle injury in the second round and missing the remainder of the competition. In spite of his injury, he was invited to participate in the Vancouver Canucks 2013 training camp in September after he was left undrafted in the NHL selections.

Collegiate

After a nice career in the Quebec’s top junior league, he then moved to Canadian collegiate hockey, lining up for the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds.

In his final year there, Maillet recorded a league leading 55 (23+32) points as the Reds qualified for the playoffs for the second consecutive season. During the 2017 U Sports University Cup, he recorded a hat trick to help the team defeat the Queen’s University Gaels 5:1 and received U Sports Player of the Year Award and the Senator Joseph A. Sullivan trophy. He was then awarded Playoffs MVP honors and it looked pretty clear that he was ready to play pro hockey.

Moving up

After his pro hockey debut in 2017 playing eight games with the Ontario Reign of the American Hockey League, Maillet spent the two next years with the same tean, posting excellent numbers, increasing his production to 54 (16+38) points in 2018-2019. Such a strong play couldn’t go unnoticed, and the Washington Capitals decided to ink him to a two-year deal.

Maillet kept on producing points at the AHL level within his new organization, but failed to win a full-time spot with the big boys – he would end up with only two career NHL games with the Capitals in 2020-2021. Once his deal with the Capitals was over, he decided to move overseas and signed a one-year deal in the KHL with Metallurg Magnitogorsk.

Move to the KHL

The rest is recent history. In his debut season, Maillet was a key member for Magnitka as the Southern Urals franchise reached the Gagarin Cup finals on a losing effort against CSKA Moscow en route to its second triumph. The Canadian forward was a top scorer for his team, but that wasn’t enough as the Muscovites grabbed the cup with a game-seven win that was tough to swallow for the Ilya Vorobyov’s men.

However, this year, Maillet and Magnitka will have another chance to prove their worth and hunt the third Gagarin Cup triumph for Metallurg – the first in the post-Sergei Mozyakin era.