Youngster report – First week

The KHL season has started and it’s time to look at who were the best U23 players in this first part of the season. Dinamo Minsk, Admiral, and Torpedo have some of the featured young guns.

Vitaly Pinchuk

F, Dinamo Minsk

Season stats: 6 G, 9 (4+5) points

The Belarusian forward had a tremendous start of the new season, even being for a while on the top of the KHL scoring race before Dynamo Moscow’s master Nikita Gusev took over. Pinchuk, 21, is currently on a five-game scoring streak, although Dinamo Minsk is struggling despite his production. In particular, the Zhlobin native had three straight multi-point games against Vityaz, Kunlun Red Star, and Torpedo, but Dinamo only had one win over that span. Pinchuk also added a goal in the team’s 1:2 OT losing effort against Ak Bars and had a helper against Traktor. Dinamo’s offensive leader is also very busy on the ice, with more than twenty minutes a night – he’s the most trusted forward in Dmitry Kvartalnov’s squad.

Daniil Gutik

F, Admiral

Season stats: 5 G, 6 (3+3) points

It was an eventful week for Gutik. The Khabarovsk native had a long path to become an impact player, but this year may be the good one for Gutik. The 22-years-old forward, in particular, had a tremendous 4-point night when Admiral defeated Spartak in Moscow 6:2 – it was Admiral’s best game of the season to date, with Gutik potting a double, including the game-winning tally when he was left one-on-one against Andrei Kareyev that he beat with a smooth backhander finding the back of the net on the goalie’s blocker side. After that game, that Gutik ended with a plus-4 differential, Gutik also had an assist against Torpedo (1:3) and scored his third goal of the season against Avangard. Admiral is currently the tenth seed in the Eastern Conference as the team needs to gain some consistency to return into playoffs consideration. The season is still young, and Gutik is in fine shape.

Vasily Atanasov

F, Torpedo

Season stats: 5 G, 9 (5+4) points

Atanasov had an incredible start of the season, getting points in all games but one (Torpedo’s 3:1 win over Admiral, despite taking 11 shots on goal), and looking unstoppable in some moments, mostly with his electrifying plays beating several players at full speed and his shooting abilities. Currently Atanasov is trailing only Gusev in the scoring race, being tied at nine points with several other players, including the aforementioned Pinchuk, leading Torpedo as the Nizhny Novgorod franchise is the only team without defeats so far, and also leading the league with a plus-7 differential. For now, Torpedo has all the chances to repeat, or even improve, last year’s success.

Alexander Nikishin

D, SKA

Season stats: 5 G, 5 (2+3) points

SKA is off to its worse start of the season in recent years, but d-man Alexander Nikishin is once again among the league’s leaders in scoring from the blue line, other than being his team’s most iced player and, oddly enough, lone defenseman to have accumulated points so far. The young defenseman started his season with a four-game scoring streak, with his first multi-point game coming in SKA’s defeat to Lokomotiv on Friday, Sep 8 – he participated in both SKA goals, first with a blue-line slapshot that went in following a deflection by Mikhail Vorobyov, then one-timing the puck in from the left circle with just three seconds to go in the middle frame to make it a 2:3 game, but SKA failed to rally back and lost the game to the Railwaymen.

The St. Petersburg franchise is now on a sensational tenth place in the Western Conference standings, but there is still plenty of time to recover.

Alexei Kolosov

G, Dinamo Minsk

Season stats: 5 G, 90.5%, 2.52 GAA

Kolosov’s stats may seem nothing phenomenal at a first sight, but while he lacked some consistency, he had some strong performances in this start of the season, including blanking Vityaz in Dinamo Minsk’s record-breaking 7:0 win, when the young goalie posted 26 saves for his third career shutout. The Belarusians failed to find consistency in their result, and Kolosov was faced with a big workload. The goalie kept his team in play in most of the games, but the team’s defense can do better and add some consistency to its performance. Dinamo Minsk is currently the ninth seed in the West; there’s plenty of time to return above the playoffs line.