Slow action scorer – Newspaper Kommersant No. 200 (7401) dated 10/27/2022

The main discovery among Russian, and maybe not only Russian, NHL players at the start of the regular season, it seems, can be considered a forward who is already 27 years old and has been playing in North America for a long time. But the game of Valery Nichushkin this season is really surprising. Having suddenly turned into the leader of the Colorado Avalanche, the current owner of the Stanley Cup, Nichushkin climbed to the top of both the scorer and sniper championship classifications.

The next day of the NHL regular season treated the audience to a very tense match, in which the New York Rangers, having parted ways with the Colorado Avalanche in the world – 2: 2 – in regulation and extra time, lost to the current owner of the Stanley Cup at home in overtime. As the main “Russian” component of the intrigue in this meeting, North American observers, of course, were drawn to fix the confrontation between two domestic goalkeepers.

The hosts had the best goalkeeper in the league last season, Igor Shesterkin, and the guests had Alexander Georgiev, a hockey player with a dramatic biography.

Georgiev moved to Colorado last summer: someone had to fill the vacancy that appeared after the Denver club changed Darcy Kemper to the Washington Capitals. And before that, he played for the Rangers for five years. And it so happened that only in the role of understudy of the unconditional first number: at first it was the outstanding Swede Henrik Lundqvist, then the rapidly soaring compatriot Shesterkin, who, for the first time finding himself with a former partner on opposite sides of the barricades, lost to him.

But no less curious was another Russian battle on the New York ice, already among the attackers. And it was also won by the hockey player “Colorado”. Rangers leader Artemy Panarin scored only in the shootout, while Valery Nichushkin opened the scoring by converting the majority. And thanks to this puck – seventh in seven championship meetings – Nichushkin climbed to the top of both major statistical classifications. In sniping, he leads with another Russian Andrey Svechnikov from the Carolina Hurricanes, in scores, with 12 points, Panarin, David Pastrnyak of the Boston Bruins and Jesper Bratt of the New Jersey Devils.

This is already God knows what a curious twist in the account of Valery Nichushkin’s career full of them in the NHL. He went through many transformations during it. In the NHL – in the club “Dallas Stars” – Nichushkin got in 2013, having managed to become a star of the KHL at a very young age, and during the debut season in the league he was even taken to the Olympic Games in Sochi, although the Russian team did not test the choice of class forwards problems at the time.

But he didn’t succeed in flourishing in Dallas, and, feeling that something was going wrong, Valery Nichushkin even left for a couple of seasons to “reboot” to his native league – to CSKA.

He returned to the NHL in 2018, only to soon become the hero of not-too-flattering memes. Playing for Dallas, Nichushkin managed not to score a single goal in 57 consecutive games.

It seemed that on this one could safely say goodbye to the American dream. However, Valery Nichushkin, in defiance of circumstances, decided to continue trying to conquer the NHL and signed the most modest – for $ 850 thousand a year – a contract with Colorado, who was just forming an application for the future assault on the Stanley Cup and for some reason believed in a loser.

The risk paid off. After some time, Valery Nichushkin was already a reliable forward of the third link of the club, who scores points and never shirks defensive work. Not a star, but an important element of the foundation. In this status, he also spent the “golden” season of Colorado, which, without Nichushkin’s nine goals in the playoffs, without his ability to easily adapt to any partners, to the style of any link, would hardly have reached the Stanley Cup. The Denver management estimated the contribution to the striker’s success with the first truly large contract in his life – for eight years and $ 49 million. And Valery Nichushkin himself is now proving that Colorado did not lose at all with this deal.

In the current championship, Nichushkin is undergoing a new transformation – from a high-class hard worker into an absolutely full-fledged star, the same as the brightest Denver celebrities – Nathan McKinnon, Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen.

The Russian, having saved Colorado fans from the anxieties associated with the summer flight to the Calgary Flames of scorer Nazem Kadri, plays in monster mode, who simply does not have bad days and who effectively uses the huge playing time given to him for forwards – more than 20 minutes on average per match. That is, he plays approximately the way he should have played seven years ago, if he had immediately realized his potential. But the delay in its implementation only adds to the exclusivity of Nichushkin’s biography.

Alexey Dospekhov