SKA did almost anything to get Aleksandr Nikishin.
Aleksandr Nikishin pucked with 0+0 performance in the Russian Olympic team in Beijing. PDO
A deal was made in the Russian KHL, the kind of which you don’t see every day in the hockey world. St. Petersburg’s SKA traded nine players away in exchange for one promising defender.
Sportbox.ru page according to SKA paid an additional 50 million rubles, or about 814,000 euros at today’s exchange rate.
From Spartak Moscow, SKA wanted nine players by Aleksandr Nikishinwho played on the Russian Olympic team in Beijing last winter.
The 20-year-old promise scored 12 points in Spartak in the KHL regular season. The Carolina Hurricanes drafted Nikishin into the NHL in the third round in 2020.
In return, Spartak received five players who will join the team directly. These players are Fedor Sveshkov, Nikita Chibrikov, Pavel Kukštel, Maxim Krovyakov mixed Nikita Sedov.
Among them, Sveškov and Chibrikov are NHL reservations. Sveškov was drafted by the Nashville Predators in the first round last year.
The deal also transferred the player rights of four of the youngsters knocking on doors to the NHL. Spartak got the rights to Ivan Morozov, To Kirill Marchenko, to Mikhail Maltsev and to German Rubtsov. None of them are sure names for the NHL, but it is unlikely that all of them will play for Spartak.
The most promising players in the bunch are Jarmo Kekäläinen Blue Jackets reservation Marshenko and Vegas Golden Knights reservation Morozov. Maltsev and Rubtsov have remained mostly AHL players.
If the NHL doors don’t open, the players will probably continue their careers in Spartak. On the SKA side, there is a threat that Nikishin will run away to the NHL in a few years, when the purchase price will look ridiculous.