Man of the Week: Vitaly Kravtsov
KHL.ru’s weekly column returns with Vitaly Kravtsov. The forward recently returned to his native Traktor and did it in style, with twelve points in his first seven games with his old new jersey, scoring points in all games but one.
Traktor has just welcomed back one of his top players in the last few years, with Vitaly Kravtsov back in town – this will be his ninth season wearing the Traktor jersey for the forward, who will be turning 26 in about three weeks. He returned to Chelyabinsk showing success right away, scoring points in all games but one and totaling twelve points across only seven games so far. He inked a three-year deal with Traktor on Nov. 10. The next day, he scored a goal and an assist as Traktor downed Amur with a 2:1 score, and went on with great pace, becoming a key player for the team right away.
Early years
Born in Vladivostok on Dec. 23, 1999, Kravtsov’s path out of Russia’s Far East into the KHL spotlight was shaped as much by family sacrifice as by raw talent. As a child, he and his mother relocated to Chelyabinsk so he could chase real hockey opportunity while his father stayed behind in Vladivostok for work. Differently from now, in those years, Vladivostok offered few chances to pursue a career in hockey.
That move paid off quickly. Kravtsov rose through Traktor’s system — Belye Medvedi in the JHL and Chelmet in the VHL — and burst onto the senior stage in 2016–2017. By the following spring he’d lit the postseason up, tying and then breaking the KHL record for playoff points by an 18-year-old, and he capped that breakthrough by claiming the league’s Alexei Cherepanov Rookie of the Year honor. The New York Rangers then took him ninth overall in 2018, while he continued to deliver also internationally, most notably at the 2019 World Junior Championship in British Columbia, where he helped Russia to bronze and finished the tournament among the team’s top scorers.
Ranking up
North America was never a straight line for Kravtsov. After signing his entry-level deal with the Rangers, the forward split time between Hartford and guest appearances in the NHL, but each transition seemed to take something out of the rhythm he’d built in Chelyabinsk. Loans back to Traktor, assignments to the AHL and a trade to Vancouver in February 2023 meant his North American chapter was episodic rather than linear: flashes of high skill and scoring, mixed with the familiar adjustment pains. He made his NHL debut with the Rangers in April 2021 and scored his first NHL goal later that month, but the promise that accompanied a top-10 pick can be complicated by circumstance, opportunity and fit.
On 25 May, 2023 Kravtsov signed a two-year deal to rejoin Traktor, back to the environment that had built him and the ice where his instincts read best. The decision paid immediate dividends. In 2023–2024 he was a steady attacker for Traktor (34 points in 55 regular-season games) and then, in the 2024–2025 campaign, he exploded into what was indisputably his best pro season to date: 66 regular-season games, 27 goals and 31 assists for 58 points — team-leading goal totals and a finish among the league’s upper echelon of scorers. He added six goals in 19 playoff games as Traktor pushed all the way to the Gagarin Cup final for the 2024-2025 season. Across that breakout campaign he posted one of the KHL’s stronger plus/minus figures, finishing the season among the leaders in that metric for the league and registering a team-best ledger in Chelyabinsk.
Another return
After an unsuccessful run with the Vancouver Canucks this summer, Kravtsov returned home once again, with a very strong impression in the first part of the new stint. With his hot streak still going, Kravtsov can definitely help Traktor climb up the standings and have another deep playoff run next spring.
