Having a junior player as a top scorer for a KHL team doesn’t happen often. And it’s even rarer when a team has two such players in the top three for scoring. This team is this year’s Metallurg, with Danila Yurov leading the race with 47 points, veteran Maxim Karpov following at 39, and fellow 2003-born Nikita Grebyonkin as Magnitka’s third scorer with 39. Naturally, having Andrei Razin as a head coach helps – the bench boss is famous for his excellent work with prospects – but a player isn’t going far without talent and work ethic, and both Yurov and Grebyonkin have more than plenty of both.
Moreover, Yurov has just made the news for tying a league’s record – he has catch up with Vladimir Tarasenko with 47 points in this year’s regular season, making it the most for a U21 player.
On his way to this achievement, Yurov surpassed two fellow countrymen from the Urals: Chelyabinsk’s Evgeny Kuznetsov and Perm’s Anatoly Golyshev. Both had previously scored 44 points. Star forward Kirill Kaprizov had fewer points than Yurov at the same age.
At the time of setting the record, Tarasenko was already a WJC world champion. Moreover, he won the tournament in Buffalo as the captain of the Russian national team. It was Tarasenko’s fourth season in the KHL as he debuted with Sibir very early — at the age of 16.
Tarasenko earned his 47 points while playing alongside two Finns — Jonas Enlund and Jori Lehtera. They would later meet again in St. Louis. It was a very interesting trio, but their presence didn’t help Sibir make it to the playoffs. Understanding this, the club’s manager, Kirill Fastovsky, traded his hot prospect to SKA before the deadline. Tarasenko spent the end of that season and part of the next one on the banks of the Neva River due to the lockout.
Comparing with Tarasenko, Yurov seemingly emerged from nowhere. Yes, he played for the national team, but not the WJC squad, but the U18. From Dallas, he brought not gold but silver. Like Tarasenko, Yurov reached 47 points in his fourth season in the KHL. However, the first two seasons were largely a formality. 4.26 and 4.39 — this was the young forward’s average playing time.
Last season, Yurov’s ice time doubled. It seemed like a serious breakthrough, but it still amounted to just over 8 minutes on average per game. And often Ilya Vorobyov left Danila on the bench as the thirteenth forward. At the same time, Grebyonkin carried Amur on his shoulders, getting decent playing time even as a loaned player. It seems Yurov could only dream of being in his peer’s place.
Lately, Danila has been playing with Alexander Petunin and Nikita Mikhailis — former leaders of Severstal and Barys. Despite his age, Yurov takes on the role of center forward and generally takes the game upon himself in the middle.
Needless to say, Yurov’s transformation, who had four times fewer points under Vorobyov, is linked to the emergence of Andrey Razin at the helm of Metallurg. He looked at Danila with a clear eye, trusted him, and did not go wrong.
Danila Yurov was born on Dec 22, 2003 in Chelyabinsk, one of the top hockey town in Russia, where he started playing for the Sergei Makarov hockey school. Other players who came from this academy include Traktor’s Alexander Sharov and Salavat Yulaev’s Yegor Suchkov – another two smooth-skating players who play an offensive style of hockey, pretty much like Yurov, but on a lower level.
Yurov and his family moved to Magnitogorsk when Danila was aged 11, and didn’t move since then. After paying his dues in Magnitka’s junior system, Yurov had his debut in the JHL in 2019-2020, scoring 13 (6+7) points in 18 games for the Steel Foxes squad. He also started representing Russia on the international stage, culminating with a silver medal at the 2021 U18 WJC in Dallas.
Metallurg cautiously integrated the young, perspective forward into its lineup. In the first few games, he only played a couple of shifts and spent more time practicing and traveling with the main team. He didn’t enjoy much playing time, but then COVID intervened.
Half of the Magnitka roster went into quarantine, and Yurov was bumped up to the second line with imports Taylor Beck and Andrej Nestrasil. On one hand, this could be seen as an advantage. Experienced partners would cover for him if needed, they’d have his back. But when you play with foreigners, you inevitably face a language barrier. Apparently, this wasn’t a big issue for Danila — precisely in this combination, he scored his first goal in the KHL in a game against Severstal.
Thus, the forward broke Vladislav Kamenev’s club record and became the youngest scorer for Metallurg in the KHL. At the time of the scored goal, he was 16 years and 306 days old. Before Yurov, only two hockey players in the league’s history had distinguished themselves at a younger age: Tarasenko and Maxim Kitsyn.
Yurov has showed continuous progress, and this year, he has another record in front of himself. And he still has four games to increase his loot.