Nigel Dawes: The most productive international player
KHL.ru continues telling the stories of those figures who became legendary in the league. Today, the talk is about Nigel Dawes, the author of ten hat-tricks, and the second sniper in the KHL history.
Nigel Dawes’ career shares many similarities with the hockey path of another recent subject of this column, Kevin Dallman. Reaching the status of an NHL regular, followed by assignments to farm clubs, trades, and moves. Yes, there were moments of success, but they couldn’t establish consistent NHL play and a strong reputation. At one point, inspired by the example of Dallman and fellow countrymen, Dawes headed overseas to the KHL, where he became a legend, a captain, and a player for the Kazakhstan national team.
In his youth, Dawes was highly regarded. At the 2004 IIHF WJC in Finland, he became the top scorer (6+5 in 6 games) for Team Canada, surpassing future superstars of global hockey like Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, and others. The following year, Dawes helped Canada winning the gold, playing alongside the same teammates, including Patrice Bergeron, Corey Perry, and more.
Dawes moved to Kazakhstan in 2011. However, he had already become familiar with the KHL back in 2008. On Oct 1, in Bern, Switzerland, Metallurg Magnitogorsk faced off against the New York Rangers. Magnitka earned the opportunity to play against an NHL team by winning the European Champions Cup.
A day before that, the Rangers played an exhibition game against SC Bern and collected a 8:1 win. However, the game against the Russian team took a completely different course. By the middle of the match, Metallurg Magnitogorsk was up by three goals. Twenty minutes later, there were two more goals on the scoreboard. And 20 seconds before the end of the third period, a Magnitogorsk defenseman made a critical passing mistake, allowing Ryan Callahan to go one-on-one with the goalie, scoring a goal and bringing the final score to 3:4. However, both the style of play and the score showed the main point: the NHL was not a different planet, as fans of the league in Russia and abroad used to say. Two years later, SKA and Dinamo Riga confirmed this in their intense matches against Carolina and Phoenix. The Petersburg team won 5:3, while the Latvians lost 1:3.
Barys, unconstrained by the foreign player limit and due to the absence of a large number of high-level Kazakh players, invited a significant number of foreigners from the first season of the KHL. Some of them looked very solid. Kevin Dallman, for example, emerged as the top scorer, sniper, and playmaker of the team in his debut season. However, Barys didn’t initially achieve significant playoff success – in the first two seasons, the team lost 0-3 to Ak Bars in the opening rounds.
In 2010, the club recruited two forwards from the Czech national team, Lukas Kaspar and Jiri Novotny, as well as American Brandon Bochenski from Tampa Bay. This marked the beginning of the formation of the potent Barys attacking unit, which defined the team’s identity for several years.
Best line
In 2011, Barys once again suffered from a sweep in the first round of the Gagarin Cup playoffs by Ak Bars Kazan. It was then that the team welcomed new recruits – Czech forward Kamil Kreps, along with Canadians Nigel Dawes and Dustin Boyd from the Montreal’s farm club. This marked the birth of two international units for the Kazakhs: the Czech troika and the North American one.
In the 2012 playoffs, Barys already won three games in the first round against Metallurg Magnitogorsk. The following year, they achieved the same result in a series against the future finalist, Traktor. In his first year, Dawes ranked fourth in team scoring. In the second season, he moved up to second place. On Feb 22, 2013, Dawes became the first player in KHL history to score four goals in a Gagarin Cup playoffs’ match.
Nigel Dawes 608 games, 550 points.
31.05.2011 Signs with Barys.
22.02.2013 Becomes the first player in KHL history to score four goals in a playoffs’ game.
25.01.2015 First KHL All-Star Game appearance.
01.11.2017 Becomes the first player in KHL history to reach 10 hat-tricks.
“I played as a forward throughout my career and loved scoring goals. But previously, I only scored as much in the AHL, and before that in junior hockey,” Dawes commented his performance.
The Czech forwards, unable to outcompete the North Americans, left Astana in 2012. In 2013, KHL giants had their eyes on the Barys’ leader. Furthermore, according to media reports, SKA, Salavat Yulaev, and Avangard were interested in Dawes. However, he opted to extend his agreement with the Astana side. Two years later, the Canadian signed another new contract with the Kazakhs, this time for three seasons. Starting from 2016, Dawes served as the teams’ captain.
“My main goal was to stay with Barys. I enjoy playing in Astana, and I am happy to return to this city with a 3-year contract that has an extension option. I will remain in Astana and play for Barys as long as the team allows me,” Dawes said.
The combination of Dawes, Boyd, and Bochenski set the tone for Barys until the spring of 2017. After 2013, the team reached the playoff first round twice and narrowly lost 3-4 to Avangard in another instance. In 2015 and 2016, Dawes, Boyd, and Bochenski were awarded the Top Line award. They scored the most goals as a trio – 62 and 50, respectively. In total, the North Americans played 298 games together and scored 267 goals. In the history of the KHL, only the unit of Danis Zaripov, Jan Kovar, and Sergei Mozyakin netted more tallies (320 in 287 matches).
However, in 2017, at the age of 35, Bochenski announced his retirement. After a sabbatical season, he returned to hockey for one more year, but Dawes was no longer with Barys. In the same summer, Boyd moved to Dynamo Moscow
“We need to move forward and build new links. Someone once said, ‘Everything flows, everything changes.’ Naturally, I will have the best memories of the seasons played with them. We made a splash in the KHL! I hope we can achieve the same success we had with Bochenski and Boyd, now with Linden and Matt,” Dawes said in an interview with KHL.ru.
However, the troika of Dawes, Vey, and Frattin did not bring luck to Barys. In 2018, the team failed to make it to the playoffs, showing the worst result in KHL history – 10th place in the Eastern Conference. After that season, Dawes left the team.
Only Mozyakin in front
Dawes then obtained Kazakhstani citizenship and debuted for the national team in the 2016 IIHF World Championship in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The forward became the team’s top scorer, tallying 8 (4+4) points in 7 matches, although this effort couldn’t prevent Kazakhstan from relegation. The following year, Dawes once again emerged as the most productive player for the national team in the World Championship’s first division (5 goals and 4 assists in 5 matches), yet the team couldn’t return to elite.
Dawes participated in Olympic Games qualification tournaments twice more. He consistently showcased good performance and averaged a point per game. However, Kazakhstan failed to qualify for both the 2018 and subsequent Olympic Games.
14.01.2018 Participation at the home-soil KHL All-Star Game as the ‘King of hat-tricks.’
05.05.2018 Moves to Avtomobilist, for which he’ll score 119 points in 119 games.
14.06.2020 Moves to Ak Bars, where he will reach the Eastern Conference finals.
16.04.2023 Announces his retirement.
Second sniper and fifth scorer in the KHL history.
Top sniper in the KHL 2018.
Twice with his Barys partners wins the Best Troika award (2015, 2016).
Silver medal winner, top scorer and sniper at the IIHF WJC (2004).
WJC champion (2005).
KHL All-Star Game participant (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).
After departing from Barys, Dawes lined up for Avtomobilist for two seasons and Ak Bars for one, completing a total of ten seasons in the KHL. In only one of these seasons – the very first one – did he score less than 20 goals (16). He scored 20 or more goals in five occasions, and in four of them, he surpassed 30 goals. In the 2017-2018 season, Dawes became the KHL’s top sniper.
In total, the Winnipeg, Manitoba native played 608 games in the KHL and accumulated 550 points (293 goals and 257 assists). He is the best foreign player in the history of the league for points and goals scored. Additionally, he is the second highest goal-scorer in the league after Mozyakin (419 goals) and the fifth overall, trailing only Mozyakin, Vadim Shipachyov, Zaripov, and Alexander Radulov.
Dawes also holds a record that no other KHL player has achieved so far. On Nov 11, 2017, by scoring three goals in the game between Barys and Slovan, he became the first player in the league’s history to achieve 10 hat-tricks. He still holds this distinction today.
“Individual achievements and awards are nice, but they will never be my main goal. I try to achieve success with the team,” commented Dawes on his individual performances for KHL.ru.
Dawes continued his career until recently. He spent the last two seasons in Germany. However, in mid-April, he announced that he was retiring from hockey for good.
Dossier
Nigel Dawes
Born Feb 9, 1985, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Playing career: Kootenay Ice (Canada) – 2001-2005, Hartford Wolf Pack (USA) – 2003-2008, New York Rangers – 2006-2009, Phoenix Coyotes – 2009, Calgary Flames – 2009-2010, Atlanta Thrashers – 2010-2011, Chicago Wolves – 2010-2011, Montreal Canadiens – 2010-2011, Hamilton Bulldogs (Canada) – 2010-2011, Barys – 2011-2018, Avtomobilist – 2018-2020, Ak Bars – 2020-2021, Adler Mannheim (Germany) – 2021-2023.
Honors: Gold (2005) and silver (2004) medal at the IIHF WJC.
