Russian prospect Sergey Fedorov is starting to look less like a long-shot name on a scouting board and more like a real NHL project.
That’s the view from Kraken scouting director Jeff Kron, who said Fedorov has already checked off a lot of the boxes teams chase beyond pure scoring. Kron saw him last month at a Florida combine camp for Russian prospects run by agent Dan Milstein, and the impression stuck.
“He’s kind of almost a complete two-way player,” said Kron, who saw Fedorov in action last month at a Florida combine camp for Russian prospects run by hockey agent Dan Milstein. “He’s slightly undersized but he’s an excellent skater, agile, he’s quick and he’s extremely smart.”
Seattle’s path to getting a cleaner read on Russian talent has become more complicated since Russia was banned from competing internationally as a country following the 2022 invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The Kraken lean on part-time scout Alexandr Plyushkev, who has deep connections in the KHL and Russian junior ranks, along with leagues in Finland, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
The Florida camp has become a key piece of that puzzle. Top Russian prospects are invited there, 31 of 32 NHL teams attended this year, and Milstein covers transportation, lodging and the difficult visa work needed to get the players overseas.
From the reports and the live looks, Kron believes Fedorov’s game travels well. He said the teen can handle power-play duty, kill penalties and move between center and wing. He also sees a player who can create offense without getting loose defensively.
“His talent level and hockey IQ doesn’t really correlate to the numbers he’s been putting up,” Kron said. “But I think that there’s enough talent and skill for him to kind of bump that up a little bit.”
Fedorov, who models his game after onetime Detroit Red Wings Russian centerman Pavel Datsyuk, has already gotten a first taste of KHL hockey and is eager for more this season with Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo. He said the experience only made him want the next step more.
“I was really motivated to play there,” he said. “It was very exciting.
I enjoyed every second I was there. It was very cool.”
The mental side was the first hurdle.
“I had to get it out of my head that I was playing against these much older guys,” he said. “The biggest thing was to settle down and just try to play hockey and show what I can do. I didn’t want to act intimidated.”
Then came an odd wrinkle: the second-tier pro league was actually tougher for him to settle into.
“It was the hardest because players were not as skilled,” he said. “They made a lot of mistakes, there was less speed.
The game wasn’t as interesting. Maybe a little boring.”
Fedorov handled the interview in English, a language he began studying in fourth grade after his family moved about 1,200 miles from Omsk to Nizhny Novgorod. The city, about 260 miles east of Moscow, has 1.2 million people and was a major change from his Siberian upbringing.
His early hockey life was built in the cold. As a kid in Tomsk, he went mushroom picking with his grandfather in the forests around town, where he saw “a lot of different animals” and once spotted a brown bear. “It was far away so I was safe,” he said.
He started wearing skates at 2 and playing hockey at 4, coached outdoors by his father, Steba, a former amateur player. Winters in Tomsk could drop to minus-30 degrees or lower, and while he eventually had indoor rinks available for youth hockey, a lot of his development came outside near home.
By age 7, he had moved again when his mother, Xsenia, took a banking job in Nizhny Novgorod. The family drove four days to get there.
The bigger city, and the proximity to Moscow and other major centers, raised the level of competition. Fedorov kept climbing anyway.
The numbers back up some of that growth. He wins 53% of faceoffs and has an 86% pass completion rate. Even though he is much smaller than the average older Russian pro, the teen still won 49% of puck battles, and his puck-possession numbers have the Kraken encouraged about what comes next.
Kraken player development director Cory Murphy said Fedorov’s approach stood out at development camp.
“We did a face-off presentation one morning and then right after practice he was grabbing me and (European based player development consultant) Frans (Nielsen) to work on his face-offs to follow up. He wanted more info.
“We’ve said that 10 times to players that we have resources so make sure you use them ,” Murphy said. “And we think he’s one guy that really stood out doing that.”
Now Fedorov is headed back into a more full-time pro path in Russia, carrying with him the experience of the Florida camps and a brief look at Seattle this week. He said he liked what he saw.
“It’s a very good place here,” he said. “The oceans, the forests and the mountains. It’s very beautiful, I think.”
And for a player who grew up on frozen Siberian rinks, that dream of reaching the NHL is no longer some distant idea.
“We all have dreams,” he said. “Now, I’ll try to live mine.”
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