“Vegas” made the right decision with the Russian striker – Kommersant

Russian forward Ivan Barbashev became the hero of the opening match of the Stanley Cup quarterfinal series between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Edmonton Oilers. Two goals from Barbashev, whom Vegas traded from the St. Louis Blues at the end of winter, and many other useful actions of the Russian hockey player helped his club win a home victory – 6:4.

As the winter drew to a close, before the trade ban went into effect, Vegas was by no means the most active NHL club on the market. On the contrary, he behaved quite reservedly, unlike some competitors, who were also highly rated and also clearly determined not only to get into the playoffs, but to go far there. But the match that opened the Vegas streak with Edmonton brought to mind one of the club’s not-so-flashy deals.

In late February, he took from St. Louis for a small compensation in the form of a junior with not too clear prospects for Zach Dean, Russian forward Ivan Barbashev, a hockey player with an interesting career. In his youth, he played for junior and youth teams, but still he was not considered then, at the beginning and middle of the last decade, as a player gifted somehow in a special way.

But Barbashev nevertheless decided to break into the NHL – and through the Canadian junior teams, through the St. draft work.

In fact, in the very first full season in the NHL – four years ago – Ivan Barbashev had a chance to become the owner of the Stanley Cup. And then his status in the club gradually increased, and from a hard worker from the fourth link, he turned into a hockey player of the upper links, receiving a lot of playing time and gaining a fairly decent amount of points.

True, St. Louis, after its take-off in 2019, could not maintain the level and went into the shadows. And in the current season, it seems, he generally resigned himself to the fact that he could no longer make grandiose achievements in the current composition, and in the course of it he initiated a personnel restructuring, parting with several important characters at once. So, Ryan O’Reilly went to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Vladimir Tarasenko went to the New York Rangers. “Vegas” got 27-year-old Barbashev, who, in terms of the sonority of the name, of course, is inferior to the two partners. But it is unlikely that the club that bought him regretted that he chose him.

More during the regular season ESPN and other North American media resources covering hockey noted that Ivan Barbashev is ideally suited to the traditional Vegas game concept, which his current coach Bruce Cassidy also likes. She is involved not in betting on superstars, but in the active play of all four attacking units and all three pairs of defenders in any part of the court, in plowing. And in this sense, the Barbashev station wagon was a great find for Vegas

The playoffs highlighted his virtues even brighter.

Ivan Barbashev famously had a series of opening rounds, in which Vegas carried out – 4: 1 – the Winnipeg Jets, and opened the series of the next round with an amazing match in terms of productivity.

In it, his team met with its, one might say, antipode – relying mainly on the rarely vanishing inspiration of incomparable superstars Edmonton, which has Connor McDavid, who scored more than 150 points in the regular season and the second scorer of the championship after him, in the attack line Leon Draisaitl, who is now in a crazy tone. Draisaitl scored as many as four goals against Vegas, McDavid was also not bad. But their personal exploits were still not enough to cope with the usual tough, disciplined and unforgiving owners. And the best illustration of these qualities was just the game of Ivan Barbashev.

He scored two goals in different ways: one by shooting goalkeeper Stuart Skinner after a loss, the other by deftly substituting a stick in the patch. But that’s not all. Barbashev also made four so-called hits – accentuated power moves against rivals valued in the playoffs, and blocked two other people’s shots. Really chic statistics, no less striking than Draisaitl’s poker, especially considering the outcome of the match.

Alexey Dospekhov