LAS VEGAS – Georgi Romanov, signed out of Russia over the summer, is working on his English.
Good thing that he’s got a lot of support with the San Jose Sharks.
“I’m here,” fellow Yekaterinburg native Danil Gushchin said. “[Evgeni Nabokov’s] here. We can help him in any situation that he cannot translate.”
There’s no shortage of Russians at San Jose Sharks facilities – Gushchin, Nabokov, Shakir Mukhamadullin, Nikolai Knyzhov, and Nikita Okhotiuk, to name a handful.
Wife Irina also emigrated with Romanov to the Bay Area.
For his part, Gushchin says he’s known Romanov for just four years, pointing out that the 23-year-old goalie is two years older than him. They have trained together at times in Yekaterinburg.
“Huge goalie, for sure,” Gushchin said of the 6-foot-6 netminder. “But he can move well. You can see that in the last game.”
Gushchin is talking about Romanov’s outstanding 41-save performance to lead the San Jose Sharks to a 4-3 shootout victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Friday, in the first day of the Rookie Faceoff.
“He played great,” head coach John McCarthy said, “gave us chance to win the game.”
As for Gushchin, McCarthy also praised his opening day performance, highlighted, naturally, by a shootout strike.
The highly-skilled 5-foot-10 winger said he added a “couple kilograms” of muscle this past summer. He’ll need it, as he tries to establish himself as a full-time NHL’er this fall.
EXTRA
“He’s a good guy,” Gushchin said of Romanov. “Really funny.”
Gushchin brought the funny too. Gushchin says that Romanov reached out to him to talk about the San Jose Sharks after signing.
“We saw each other in our hometown. He asked me [about] California houses, how the AHL and NHL. How’s living here. Taxes are expensive,” he laughed. “He asked about everything.”
Also, according to Gushchin, it’s pronounced row-MAN-nov.
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