Kirill Kaprizov, №1 select at KHL draft 2014

The sixth annual KHL draft was held in Saint-Peteresburg at 7-8 May. At first day the third time in a row league organized top prospects game between the kids 1997 y.o.b. At this game team East easily beat the West with 6-2 score.

KHL is not an NHL where draft-lottery have been provided with few months before a draft. Here the first team to pick becomes unveiled with two hours before a draft with equal chance for four worst team of regular season. This time Metallurg Novokuznetsk won lottery again as they did in 2011 when they took Anton Slepyshev from Dizel Penza. After the draft Slepyshev played for KHL team and now he's wearing colors of Salavat Yulaev team.

With first pick Metallurg Novokuznets took their own brilliant Kirill Kaprizov who should become a top Russian player of this age group. After selection Kaprizov was sure that "I'll try my best to make KHL debut in season-2014/15". Good start for the kid in very young team. The next most interesting pick is Nikita Korostelev, player from Sarnia Sting, who wasn't in KHL scouting bureau ratings. Avtomobilist Yeketerinburg and their GM Leonid Weisfeild took him, and it's a good choice, in fact that you could sell rights for him in one day at a good price.

Specialists also should like 12^th overall pick of CSKA Moscow who  decided to take the rights on Suisse player with Russian routs Denis Malgin from Zurich Lions. Travis Konecny and Jeremy Roy became first North-Americans that have been taken by clubs. And their new home could become Riga and local club Dinamo. Newcomer club Sochi was represented by former sporting director of CSKA and scout of Detroit Red Wings Nikolai Vakurov. His strategy was to choose Russians who left the country few years ago to play in North America.

Finnish Jokerit tactics to choose Finns and Swedes from different cities and they stopped on Aleksi Saarela from Lukko, Julius Nattinen from JYP, Jens Luke from Brynas, Veeti Vainio from Blues and Vili Saarijarvi from Karpat. One more newcomer Lada Togliatti with first choice protected their own forward Denis Guryanov who could become an interesting addition even for KHL next year.

One more great marketing move was made by Medvescak Zagreb with 77^th overall pick they drafted Canadian wunderkind Connor McDavid who due to jokes should become №1 at NHL drafts 2013, 2014 and 2015. Then they made a first Russian choice with drafting Russian Roman Skhodtsev from independent hockey school "Rus'" (Moscow). You can imagine how this kid was surprised but Zagreb is much better than going from Moscow to Vladivostok as Dynamo Alexander Zhebelev should do.

For Croatian team to make an expansion to Russian players should become as a very important thing. KHL extends the numbers of local players in foreign clubs from 5 to 7 in 2014/15 season, but Russian players due to this rule won't be counted as foreign, they would be domestic. Means, that Medvescak could play with 5 Canadians, 5 Americans, 5 Swedes,  5 Finns and 7 Russians. No Croatians at all.

In Russian media KHL draft usually called as "meanless", of course, it's not NHL draft where team plans their nearest future. But you should understand that this draft it's a chance for some kids from independent schools to feel themselves as a part big hockey country and chance to move maybe Novokuznetsk, Khabarovsk, or to stay in Moscow, or to go to Zagreb, do you think that it's meanless?