There are players who score goals, and then there are players who change the temperature of an entire franchise. For the Ottawa Senators in the 1990s, Alexei Yashin was the second kind.
If you followed the Ottawa Senators in the mid-to-late 1990s, you didn’t just know the name Alexei Yashin—you felt his presence. He was the team’s first real star, the player who gave fans hope that Ottawa could become more than a basement-dweller.
The 2020 NHL Draft checked off a lot of tropes – a clear #1, Alexis Lafrenière, a clear power-forward, Quinton Byfield, and a healthy battle for top defense between Jake Sanderson and Jamie Drysdale – but it lacked a clear top European.