Sabres pleased they changed philosophy with drafting Russian players

Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) – Friday marks one week before the Buffalo Sabres and the rest of the NHL make their selections in Round 1 of the 2024 NHL Draft in Las Vegas.

Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams and assistant general manager Jerry Forton spoke on Thursday about the options Buffalo may have come the time the team pick with the 11th overall selection on Friday.

Adams and Forton had a change in philosophy back in 2021 when they started drafting Russian players. Before that, Buffalo hadn’t taken a Russian-born player since Vasili Glotov was selected in the seventh round of the 2016 NHL Draft by Tim Murray.

The 26-year-old Glotov played this year for St. Petersburg SKA of the Kontinental Hockey League, scoring 22 goals and 40 points in 60 games.

Before that, you’d have to go back to 2013 when they took defenseman Nikita Zadorov in the first round, and then the year before with center Mikhail Grigorenko selected in the first round.

In 2021, the Sabres selected Russian forwards Prokhor Poltapov and Aleksandr Kisakov in the second round, followed by forward Stiven Sardarian in the third round and defenseman Nikita Novikov in the sixth round.

Poltapov is finishing out his contract with CSKA Moscow in the KHL, where he scored five goals and added eight assists for 13 points in 56 games.

Kisakov has spent two seasons with the Rochester Americans, scoring 11 goals and 10 assists for 21 points in 80 games.

Sardarian has played two years for the University of New Hampshire, scoring a combined nine goals and 12 assists for 21 points in 61 games. He has since transferred to play the 2024-25 season at Northern Michigan University.

Novikov had a good rookie season in Rochester this year, scoring three goals and 20 assists for 23 points in 65 games.

The following draft in 2022, Buffalo took forward Viktor Neuchev in the third round, followed by defenseman Vsevolod Komarov in the fifth round.

Like Novikov, Neuchev played his first pro season in North America, and came on near the end of the Amerks' season. Overall, he finished the season with 11 goals and 17 assists for 28 points in 57 games.

Meanwhile, Komarov was voted the best defenseman in the QMJHL this past season, leading all blue liners with 14 goals and 55 assists for 69 points. He was also second in the league with 105 penalty minutes.

Komarov's performance in the playoffs helped the Drummondville Voltigeurs to a league championship and an appearance in the CHL Memorial Cup. He was also named the Playoffs MVP with 15 points (5+10) in 19 playoff games.

In this year’s draft, Russian winger Ivan Demidov could go as high as second overall, while defenseman Anton Silayev could also go very high in the first round. Meanwhile, wingers Igor Chernyshov, Matvei Gridin and Nikita Artamonov could also be first rounders next Friday night.

"Philosophically, it hasn’t changed. You have to slot the players where you believe they are, take away geography, and put it purely on projection. Then you’re going to have to look at the variables," explained Adams during his pre-draft press conference.

"Some of that could be injury history, some of that could be contracts tied up in Europe, and certainly the Russian variable is real. What is your plan to develop them? Are you going to be able to get them over here? And we’ve seen it both ways. We’ve drafted some Russian players that we’ve been able to get over here quick and get into our system, and we’ve drafted players like a Poltapov, who we knew was going to be years away based on a contract. If you believe you have the opportunity to get a player of value, well do it."

"We rate the player first, and then you have to consider what are the unknowns with some of those players," Forton added. "Do we have access to the player pre-draft? In those cases, we might drop the players down our list a little bit, and then it becomes, can you get high value because you got them later in the draft (like Novikov)?

"These players have a lot on their plate, and maybe some of their development has been stagnated because of that, both having to come over and adapt and adjust to culture over here and to the North American style of play, and just not having exposure the past two or three years not playing in international tournaments and being challenged in best-on-best tournaments. Our development staff doesn’t have as much direct contact with them."

Forton has always been pretty good at figuring out how the top-10 or so picks will go. As for this year, he thinks there is a top-6 group of players that will come off the board well in advance of the Sabres' pick at 11th overall. After that, between Picks 7 and 15, is where things may get a bit unique.

"I think there’s a really wide spectrum of players, and a lot of difference of opinions across the league on that group of players," Forton explained. "In past drafts, you could probably tick off the top-10 or 11, and one of those players would be available. It wouldn’t shock me this year that there could be two or three players that we have in our top-7 or eight that are available at 11. So I think there’s a little bit of a drop off after five, but then there’s a deep cluster of players after that."

I’ll be in Las Vegas for the draft, while Brian Koziol and Brayton Wilson get our coverage started on Friday at 7 p.m. ET after "Schopp and the Bulldog".