Kron said Fedorov has already shown above average traits many NHL teams seek beyond offensive totals.
“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.”
Part of the recent difficulty in scouting Russian players is they’ve been banned from competing internationally as a country since the 2022 invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The Kraken employ a part-time scout, Alexandr Plyushkev, who is well-connected throughout the KHL and the Russian junior ranks, plus leagues in Finland, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
From there, top Russian prospects get invited to the Florida camp, attended this year by 31 of 32 NHL teams, where Milstein pays for all transport and lodging while making the very complex visa arrangements to bring the players overseas.
Kron said that, from what he’s seen in-person and the Plyushkev scouting reports, Fedorov is versatile enough to man the power play, kill penalties and move interchangeably from center to wing. He creates offensive chances but is also very strong defensively and doesn’t get caught out of position in any of the three zones.
“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.”
Having Fedorov, who models his game after onetime Detroit Red Wings Russian centerman Pavel Datsyuk, get stronger and adapt to pro hockey rigors also shouldn’t hurt. Fedorov’s first taste of KHL action now has him longing for more this coming season with the Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo.
“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 biggest adjustment was to avoid becoming overwhelmed mentally by the situation.
“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.”
Interestingly, he found the second-tier pro league tougher to adjust to, given the players were of more mixed skillsets. He likened it to the difference between the AHL and NHL and said it was difficult to get into the flow of games.
“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 conducted his entire interview in English, a language he began studying in fourth grade shortly after moving some 1,200 miles from Omsk to Nizhny Novgorod, about 260 miles east of Moscow. At 1.2 million people, Russia’s sixth largest city, it was twice the size of his hometown and much different from his Siberian roots.
As a boy, he’d gone out mushroom picking with his grandfather in some of the vast forests surrounding Tomsk. There were “a lot of different animals” around and he once even saw a brown bear. “It was far away so I was safe,” he said.
He’d started wearing skates at age 2 and playing hockey by age 4, tutored outdoors by his father, Steba, a former amateur player. Winters in Tomsk were severe, with temperatures hitting minus-30 degrees or lower while the short summers climbed to 75 degrees. Though he had indoor rinks to play at when he began youth hockey, much of his learning was outdoors in the cold given it was closer to his house.
He was already better than most kids his age in Tomsk when his mother, Xsenia, got a job with a bank in Nizhny Novgorod that took him there at age 7. They packed up the family car and drove for four days to get there. With its bigger population and being so close to Moscow and other big cities, the hockey competition was tougher. But Fedorov grew along with it and was soon near the top of the heap again.
He wins an above average 53% of faceoffs and has a pass completion rate of 86%. Despite being much smaller than the average, older Russian pro player, the teen still won 49% of puck battles. Given that and an above average puck possession rate, there’s optimism he’ll only get better.
Kraken player development director Cory Murphy said Fedorov’s willingness to learn was evident at the team’s 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.”
Fedorov now hopes to stand out even more embarking on a more full-time pro career in Russia. He’s loved his taste of American life the last two years of attending the Florida prospect camps run by Milstein and the limited view of Seattle he’s gotten this past week.
“It’s a very good place here,” he said. “The oceans, the forests and the mountains. It’s very beautiful, I think.”
Something more to strive for. A dream that once seemed a million miles away on frozen Siberian rinks, complicated by a war now in its fifth year, coming ever more clearly into focus.
“We all have dreams,” he said. “Now, I’ll try to live mine.”
