Is this Filatov kid a player?
he was named a starter on the ahl all star team. he is young (18) and physically he needs some development. he dominated the wjc and was on the all tournament team. explosive skater, quick, nice top end, plays pretty good not great in traffic, nice wrister, tries in his own zone and is marginal for two reasons 1-size and 2-tends to break out of the zone early to try and create transition. most consider him a better talent than brassard. the top 4 prospects mason/brassard/jake/nikita look promising. nikita needs to bulk up, that will come in time. he is about 6 ft and 175lbs, hell bulk up but hell never be the physical force ovie is. nikita has played in the cska (red army) team in russia for his jr development and level 3 and the big club (now the khl cska team). this was nik zherdevs and manyother high level russians teams, it is considered one of the better clubs in the world.
reality is he dropped some due to a few reasons: teams wanted the big physical dmen of last years draft (thus the leafs trading up for luke schenn) and he was russian with the pending khl and the flight of some nhl players. nikita has said all along he has wanted to play in the nhl, he speaks good english-even compared to established euro players and comes from a good family-his mother is a teacher.
stamkos was seen as the #1 pick, ill tell you that stamkos resulted was a big part of the melrose firing. barry felt steven was not ready, the new owners who put up billboards to sell tickets before teh draft disagreed and felt he should be a top six player from the get go.
you should see some nikita in the coming days with rash of injuries. ill be frank depending on when nash gets back it could be a rough stretch to the break. this team is essentially half an ahl team. if they play with the fire and determination weve seen they might be able to float and overcome the talent gap with the loss of those guys, the lack of knowledge of the system, the break out pass system and the entry system. hopefully juice and raffi will be back in the next week or so.
