Yakupov headed to the KHL

[yave1964]

And the winner for the worst top pick in the draft is...… no longer Patrik Stefan. Or Alexandre Daigle.

 

  Nail Yakupov at six years into the league and at age 24 seems to be washed up and done. After appearing in 58 games for the Avalanche sitting as a healthy scratch for 24 more and scoring a measly 9 goals, the Yak man found himself without an offer for his services in the NHL this year and has signed to play for the next two years with SKA St. Petersburg.

  He managed 350 games and a paltry 62 goals during that time, playing indifferent defense and never synced up with any partner on the forward lines, seemingly unable to understand where he was to be at any given time. The Oilers grew frustrated after 4 uneventful years and let him go, he bounced for a year with the Blues and a year in Colorado never coming close to living up to the hype.

  So move over Brian Lawton, and Stefan and Daigle, there is a new sheriff in town claiming the crown as the worst ever top pick. 

 

Speaking of the 2012 draft, a quick look at the first four picks in the draft:

1) Yakupov. Simply an awful player.

2) Ryan Murray. A meh defenseman.

3) Galchenyuk. Has shown flashes of boom and bust. Sometimes on the same shift.

4) Griffin Reinhart. Chosen ahead of Morgan Reilly, Lindholm, Trouba and Dumba who all went right behind him.

 

  Just a sobering reminder that for all of us who are pumped about our teams draft this year, it is still a crapshoot, often more crap than shoot.

 

 

[ruxpin]

@yave1964

 

Well, he's going to miss his flight due to taking too long to pack.    He was okay brushing his teeth.  He's always been really good at brushing his teeth but practiced and practiced and practiced.   He enjoyed practicing what he already had down.  But packing not so much.   He wasn't very good at it but never practiced.  Why change what you do?   Practicing what you're not already good at kind of sucks and won't really help anything anyway.

 

So when it came time to pack for his flight he just kind of stood there looking at the netting bag his mom had given him years ago, circling and blinking...as if stuff was going to go in the net all by itself.

[JR Ewing]

Nail Yakupov:

 

-Nice kid.

-Million dollar tools

-Has no tool box.

 

[ruxpin]

11 minutes ago, JR Ewing said:

Nail Yakupov:

 

-Nice kid.

-Million dollar tools

-Has no tool box.

 

 

 

Yeah, a nice meathead.

[fishthefish101]

What are you talking about? He's an awesome pla... Wait... who is he again? 

[JR Ewing]

Just now, fishthefish101 said:

What are you talking about? He's an awesome pla... Wait... who is he again? 

 

You know: the kid with the eyebrows.

 

 

[jammer2]

From David Spades lips to the world's ears......BUH......BYYYYEEEEE!!!

[JR Ewing]

14 hours ago, yave1964 said:

Speaking of the 2012 draft, a quick look at the first four picks in the draft:

1) Yakupov. Simply an awful player.

 

Absolutely.

 

14 hours ago, yave1964 said:

 

2) Ryan Murray. A meh defenseman.

 

So, this is who the Oilers scouts wanted going up to the draft, until Daryl Katz walked into the room an hour before and told them to take Yakupov. Murray was never going to be a great defenseman, but I think it's safe to say that his career has been impacted by injuries. He's 24 and has only played one full season (2016) since he was 17 years old. Injuries at that stage of a player's development can be crippling.

Murray would have been a better pick, of course, but then instead of a bust, we'd be hearing about how he's made of glass.

 

14 hours ago, yave1964 said:

3) Galchenyuk. Has shown flashes of boom and bust. Sometimes on the same shift.

 

Yup

 

14 hours ago, yave1964 said:

4) Griffin Reinhart. Chosen ahead of Morgan Reilly, Lindholm, Trouba and Dumba who all went right behind him.

 

Bob Green was the director of scouting when Peter Chiarelli was on the job as Oilers GM for one week and then made what essentially ended up as the Matthew Barzal for Griffin Reinhart trade. I'm convinced that this trade was heavily lobbied for by Green and Kevin Lowe, who spent many nights at Rexall Place watching the Oil Kings. Sitting there, watching the team they owned win, stocked with the sons of Oilers hockey ops members, they lost all objectivity.

 

Such was their ardour for members of those Memorial Cup winning Oil Kings that, in addition to Reinhart, the Oilers ended up bringing in:

Laurent Broissoit - 28 GP, .897 SV%

Keegan Lowe - 4 GP, 0 pts

David Musil - 4 GP, 2 pts

 

 

Interesting group.

-They all had skating issues that they could get by with in junior. NHL players immediately exposed those shortcomings.

-Keegan Lowe is (of course) the son of Kevin Lowe.

-David Musil is (of course) the son of former Oiler Frank Musil.

 

Thank God the days of nepotism are over for the Edmonton Oilers.... Ooops. Did I say that? Last weekend, they draft Oliver Rodrigue, the son of their goaltending coach.

 

Great. Now I've gone and pissed myself off again.

 

[hobie]

Is this a case of poor development, rushing a player into the NHL simply because he was a #1 choice rather than having him earn his way? 

[JR Ewing]

6 hours ago, hobie said:

Is this a case of poor development, rushing a player into the NHL simply because he was a #1 choice rather than having him earn his way? 

 

I'll copy/paste my standing "Why Nail Yakupov was a bust" post.

---------

 

Nail Yakupov is quick, elusive and has a cannon shot. But, if you watch him, one thing is crystal clear: he doesn't really know how to play hockey, and his lack of ability to process the game punishes player and team at every turn. He skates the puck into coverage, doesn't know who/how to backcheck, and even though he has a great shot, he doesn't know how to get himself into position to receive a one-time pass so that he can let it go.

 

When he was with the Oilers, there was a sequence where Darnell Nurse spent around 20 seconds battling with David Backes for the puck, won it and passed it Yakupov outside the line. Yak promptly turned and skated back into the defensive zone and passed it back to Nurse, who once again had Backes all over him in a New York minute. Another time, Patrick Maroon was working like a demon to keep possession along the boards, deep in the Jets zone, and was double-teamed by two players. Yakupov stood 5 feet away, watching the entire thing, not really knowing what he should do. Maroon lost the puck and the Jets cleared. Things like these are constant issues with him, and whether it's an issue of having too many coaches in his head or an inability to process the game at the NHL level, they are a real problem. He's not a player with 5 years of experience, but rather a player with 1 year of experience 5 times.

 

TSN's Ryan Rishaug was told by an Oilers source that Yakupov is very willing to put in hard work, but only in the areas which he's already good at or enjoys doing. Thus, last summer, he spent the bulk of his time working on his shot, especially the one-timer, even though shooting the puck is one of the things he can already do. There has been a steadfast refusal to work on the parts of his game which are not at an NHL level. When Rishaug asked him, this week, what he needs to do to improve his game, Yakupov replied "Nothing new. I just need to keep doing the same things I've always done."

 

He seems like a nice kid, but I don't know how being patient can work with somebody who has repeatedly said that he won't change his approach for anybody. Not any one of Ralph Krueger, Dallas Eakins, Todd Nelson, Todd McLellan, Ken Hitchcock or Mike Yeo could impress upon Yakupov the need to work within the team structure. Oleg Znarok, coach of the 2014 Russian Olympic team said that they simply couldn't take him on, regardless of how talented he is, because he refuses to work on his game. During the past World Hockey Championships, he was sent home early by Znarok, for the very same reasons, and when asked, Yakupov said that he fully intends to play hockey just like he did when he was 10 years old. You can't play successfully at the NHL level when you play the game like you did as a little boy.

 

TLDR - Nail Yakupov has million dollar tools, but a ten cent head for the game.

------------------

 

That post is a little over a year old, and the only thing which has changed is that he's now a player with 1 year of experience 6 times rather than a player with 6 years of experience.

[yave1964]

@JR Ewing

 

I posted somewhere in here a few years ago but I am too lazy to look up the exact quote, lol, but what sticks out to me with Yak:

 

  I remember him as a rookie on a line with Hall, watching a game against the Wings Yak would come streaking down his lane, receive the puck, his passing skills were awful so everyone knew at that stage of his career he was gonna shoot,  he would come streaking in waaaaaaayyyyyy past anywhere that would allow for either a high percentage shot or a decent rebound, just past the faceoff circle he would fire a shot that Mrazek would simply knock down and behind the net where a defender would scoop it up and clear the puck out of harms way. He did that three or four times, poor shot choices, low percentage chances with zero percent chance of a decent rebound. I watched the Oilers a few days later, same thing. I wrote it off to youth.

  And then a few years ago when he was with the Blues, I watched him steaking down the wing, instead of pushing towards the net, instead of shooting a higher percentage shot he did the same damn thing, I swear he was pretty much even with the side of the net before he even shot, like a 2 percent shot of going in tops, I remember laughing and knew for a fact that he had zero percent chance of making it at that time, four or five years in and still making the same unforced errors. It wasn't as if a defender was forcing him to go so far out, they played off him, knowing he sucked at passing and he had no idea where to shoot from. Your all the tools and no toolbox analogy sums him up well.

[JR Ewing]

@yave1964

 

He doesn't really know how to play hockey.

 

[fishthefish101]

10 hours ago, yave1964 said:

@JR Ewing

 

I posted somewhere in here a few years ago but I am too lazy to look up the exact quote, lol, but what sticks out to me with Yak:

 

  I remember him as a rookie on a line with Hall, watching a game against the Wings Yak would come streaking down his lane, receive the puck, his passing skills were awful so everyone knew at that stage of his career he was gonna shoot,  he would come streaking in waaaaaaayyyyyy past anywhere that would allow for either a high percentage shot or a decent rebound, just past the faceoff circle he would fire a shot that Mrazek would simply knock down and behind the net where a defender would scoop it up and clear the puck out of harms way. He did that three or four times, poor shot choices, low percentage chances with zero percent chance of a decent rebound. I watched the Oilers a few days later, same thing. I wrote it off to youth.

  And then a few years ago when he was with the Blues, I watched him steaking down the wing, instead of pushing towards the net, instead of shooting a higher percentage shot he did the same damn thing, I swear he was pretty much even with the side of the net before he even shot, like a 2 percent shot of going in tops, I remember laughing and knew for a fact that he had zero percent chance of making it at that time, four or five years in and still making the same unforced errors. It wasn't as if a defender was forcing him to go so far out, they played off him, knowing he sucked at passing and he had no idea where to shoot from. Your all the tools and no toolbox analogy sums him up well.

2

Yep. All brawn and no brains.