What does the recent history of KHL signings say about Vitaly Kravtsov’s chances of a successful Canucks comeback?

Just when the summer was getting a little too quiet, the Vancouver Canucks broke the silence and announced the signing of a player most thought was never coming back.

Vitaly Kravtsov, the former ninth overall selection and former brief Canuck by way of trade with the New York Rangers, had left the Vancouver organization after just 16 games in the 2022-23 season to return to Russia.

Kravtsov quickly found a new level of success in the KHL, a league he’d already played parts of six seasons in to that point.

For 2023-24, a 24-year-old Kravtsov posted career highs across the board of 55 games, 18 goals, 16 assists, and 34 points, finishing fourth in scoring for Chelyabinsk Traktor. But this past season of 2024-25, Kravtsov’s 25-year-old season, marked his true breakout with 66 games, 27 goals, 31 assists, and 58 points.

That was good for second in Chelyabinsk scoring and a tie for sixth overall in KHL scoring. All of which sounds pretty encouraging (so long as one ignores his drop to seven points in 19 playoff games). But with Kravtsov now hoping to resume his NHL career – either with the Canucks, or with some other team following a trade – it’s reasonable to ask, “How encouraging?”

In other words, we wanted to know how many other KHLers with similar profiles to Kravtsov have successfully made the jump – or the jump back, in this case. The criteria we’re looking for are other players who played in the KHL in their 20s, finished in the top 10 in a scoring category, and then attempted to transfer over to the National Hockey League thereafter. (We’ll exclude those players who were drafted and developed for a couple of years in the KHL before transferring over to their drafting team, like Alexander Nikishin and Nikolai Kovalenko, as they’re a very different sort of prospect.)

Over the past six years, we came up with a little fewer than ten direct comparables, and a decidedly mixed bag of results.

Ilya Mikheyev (25 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2018/19	62	23	22	45
NHL thereafter	350	80	85	165

Why did we go back six years instead of a more-rounded five? Well, mostly so we could start with a familiar face.

Though never drafted, Mikheyev is absolutely one of the top success stories on this list. He joined the Toronto Maple Leafs after a run of four increasingly-productive seasons in the KHL, and was an instant hit with 23 points in his first 39 games. By Year Three in the NHL, Mikheyev was up to 21 goals in 53 games, which was enough to earn him a sizeable contract from the Canucks – but the less said about that, the better.

With 20 goals and 34 points in 80 games last year, Mikheyev remains a perfectly reasonable middle-six talent at the big league level and projects to remain as such for a little bit yet. 

Nikita Gusev (27 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2018/19	62	17	31	44
NHL thereafter	97	17	37	54

This whole list is a mixed bag, and former Tampa Bay seventh rounder Gusev is a mixed bag as an individual. That NHL statline doesn’t look half-bad at all, and is better than a lot that you’ll find here. But 13 of those goals and 44 of those points came in Gusev’s “rookie” year for the New Jersey Devils.

The following year, he got off to a start of just five points – and a -12 – in 20 games. He was then dealt to the Florida Panthers, where he got back up to five points in 11 games before heading back to the KHL for 2021/22.

Mikhail Grigorenko (26 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2019/20	47	19	22	41
NHL thereafter	32	4	8	12

Grigorenko is the most direct comparable to Kravtsov you’ll find on this list. Like Kravtsov, he was drafted high, at 12^th overall in 2012. Like Kravtsov, he struggled to establish himself in a couple different NHL franchises thereafter. And like Kravtsov, he went back to the KHL and found a lot more success there.

Grigorenko mounted his comeback with the Columbus Blue Jackets and didn’t do much in 32 games, notching just four goals and 12 points before returning to the KHL for 2021/22.

Dmitrij Jaskin (28 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2020/21	59	38	22	60
NHL thereafter	12	0	1	1

Jaskin was a second round pick – 41^st overall in 2011 – who caught on enough with the St. Louis Blues to play parts of six seasons for them and as many as 76 games at a time, so he’s not like most players on this list.

But Jaskin never put up big numbers in the NHL, topping out at just 18 points, and so after a short stint in Washington he returned to the KHL, where he instantly started putting up some eye-popping goal totals.

Two seasons later, he attempted a comeback with the Arizona Coyotes, but only managed to get in 12 games and only put up a single assist. Unsurprisingly, he returned to the KHL for 2022/23. 

Vladimir Tkachev (26 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2020/21	45	11	27	38
NHL thereafter	4	0	2	2

There are two Vladimir Tkachevs out there in the annals of KHL history. This is the one who, somewhat infamously, had his first attempted NHL contract with the Edmonton Oilers rejected by the league after a rookie camp snafu.

He eventually landed with the Los Angeles Kings, but only dressed in four games for them. Unlike most of the players on this list, Tkachev accepted an assignment to the AHL for further development and managed some numbers there, with 29 points in 41 games for the Ontario Reign and six more in five postseason games. But he headed back to the KHL for 2022/23 all the same.

Mikko Lehtonen (27 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2019/20	60	17	32	49
NHL thereafter	26	0	6	6

Lehtonen is easily the weirdest example on our list, because he’s A) Finnish and B) got into the top-ten in KHL scoring as an undrafted defenceman. He was also kind of a mid-season transfer who put up 49 points in 60 games for Jokerit Helsinki in 2019/20, then 17 in his first 17 in 2020/21 before joining the late-starting NHL and its Toronto Maple Leafs.

Lehtonen got into nine games for the Leafs and notched three points before being flipped to the Columbus Blue Jackets for goalie Veini Vehvilainen. He finished out the year with three more points in 17 more games before returning to the KHL for 2021/22. His past three seasons, however, have been played in the Swiss-A league.

Lukas Sedlak (29 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2021/22	49	18	25	43
NHL thereafter	30	3	5	8

Sedlak is another one of those KHL comeback kids, like Kravtsov. Originally drafted at 158^th overall in 2011, the Czech-born Sedlak broke through for the Columbus Blue Jackets and played most of three seasons for them before departing for the KHL in 2019.

He was an instant success there, and worked his way up to 43 points in 49 games before attempting to cross back over the Atlantic. Sedlak landed in Colorado, where he only played three games before being waived and claimed by the Philadelphia Flyers. Sedlak played 27 more games for the Flyers and put up eight points before asking to have his contract terminated so that he could return to Czechia mid-season. The Flyers acquiesced, and Sedlak has been playing in Pardubice ever since.

Andrei Kuzmenko (26 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2021/22	45	20	33	53
NHL thereafter	219	72	85	157

Hey, we know this guy!

Challenging, and defeating, Mikheyev as the top success story on this list in Kuzmenko. His story doesn’t need to be rehashed too much for this fanbase. After a breakout 53-point campaign in the KHL, he had an even breakier-outier debut in Vancouver with 39 goals and 74 points in 81 games. It’s a season that would have won him the Calder Trophy, had be not been a little too old.

Kuzmenko’s sophomore season got off to a slumpy start, and he was soon enough shipped off to Calgary as part of the return for Elias Lindholm. He turned it around for the Flames though, with 25 points in 29 games…before slumping again to start the most recent 2024/25 season. The Flames dealt Kuzmenko to Philadelphia, where he righted the ship again with five points in seven games before a quick flip to the Los Angeles Kings, where he put up 17 points in 22 games and six more in six playoff games. The Kings signed Kuzmenko to a one-year extension this past summer. 

Maxim Tsyplakov (26 at time)

	Games	Goals	Assists	Points
KHL 2023/24	65	31	16	47
NHL thereafter	77	10	25	35

The latest addition to the list is also a success story…at least so far. The undrafted Tsyplakov’s debut season with the Islanders came with ten goals and 35 points in 77 games, making him a bright spot in an otherwise dark season on Long Island (eventual win in the draft lottery notwithstanding).

Where does Tsyplakov go from here? Will be become a long-term contributor, a la Mikheyev and Kuzmenko, or more of a one-and-done like Gusev? Only time will tell.

Conclusions

Nine players does not make for a large sample size, but this is the collection of Kravtsov’s most direct comparables all the same, so let’s draw whatever conclusions we can out of them.

Five of the nine players returned to the KHL after one season in North America, or less. Another, Gusev, returned after two years – and only one of them was good.

That leaves us with just Mikheyev and Kuzmenko as long-term NHL contributors, and Tsyplakov, who is trending in that direction.

And, honestly? That’s more than we expected to find. A three-out-of-nine rate isn’t bad at all for mid-20s, high-scoring talents from the KHL attempting to translate their scoring to the NHL.

It’s a rate that should result in at least a little hope of Kravtsov’s latest stint in North America going better than his previous. But it’s not, we should be clear, the same thing as saying that Kravtsov has a 1/3 shot at success.

At the same time, this history should also temper expectations enough that, should Kravtsov ultimately be flipped for a mid- or even late-round draft pick, it’s not seen as that big of an issue.

Either way, pick or player, we’re dealing with relatively low – but not nonexistent – odds of a difference-maker.