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Ivan Demidov is the second-best prospect in the 2024 NHL Draft and before the end of this piece, I’m going to convince you, using a combination of video and data, of his case.
Before I jump in, though, let’s start with the case against him.
The common arguments against Demidov as the second-best prospect in the draft posit that he’s an average-sized winger, he’s got an unconventional skating stride, and that his projection is complicated by the fact that he hasn’t played pro hockey this year or international hockey since his five-in-five showing as a 15-year-old at the 2021 Hlinka Gretzky Cup. And there’s the Russian factor associated specifically with his being signed to SKA.
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I think each of those arguments against him stands on varying degrees of shaky ground.
I’ll dive in on the skating mechanics in my review of the tape, but I’ll quickly touch on the rest here.
For starters, his official NHL Central Scouting listing after they measured him last week at Gold Star’s pre-draft showcase, however, placed him at 192 pounds and nearly 6-foot-0.5. Though I wasn’t able to attend the camp due to a scheduling conflict, all I heard from the scouts I spoke to who were in attendance was that he looked solid and presented really well. Even before his visit to Fort Lauderdale to meet with NHL clubs, it was becoming a theme in conversations I was having with teams, too, with multiple scouts getting glowing reports from Russia about his work ethic on and off the ice.
We also do have a larger sample size of Demidov against pros than people usually give him credit for. Though Demidov is scoreless on three shots in an average of 7:33 in ice time across six KHL regular-season games the last two seasons, he also outplayed Matvei Michkov in KHL preseason play and at the Sochi Hockey Open (an August tournament that features KHL clubs and the Russian U25 national team) to earn a roster spot on SKA in the fall. He actually registered a point in each KHL preseason and Sochi Hockey Open game he played this season, finishing SKA’s exhibition schedule with nine points in a combined seven games while playing a little more than 14 minutes per game. Six of those nine points were primary and across those seven games, he averaged just under five shot attempts and three shots on goal per game. He also finished plus-3 in those seven games. I believe that had he not injured his knee in his first second-tier VHL game of the season, he would have likely played more hockey at the pro level — and I believe he would have been successful there if not for having to return to junior once he got back.
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The lack of best-on-best play internationally might be the biggest non-factor of the bunch for me. Anyone who has watched Demidov play for any amount of time should come to the fast conclusion that he would have torched a couple of U18 worlds by now, and would have made a ton of plays against U20 opposition at the world juniors in Gothenburg. I have zero doubt international play would have elevated his cache, not lowered it. Zero.
While there is truth to the struggles some NHL teams have had in dealing with SKA, and Demidov’s situation does have the added layer of his brother also playing for the organization, I believe the Russian factor concerns are also overstated. Demidov has told everyone who has asked that he hopes to come to the NHL after his contract expires, his agent Dan Milstein is notorious for getting his guys to North America, and there are still plenty of players who’ve left SKA for the NHL (Andrei Kuzmenko, Artem Zub, Alexander Barabanov, Kirill Marchenko, Vasily Podkolzin and Marat Khusnutdinov just to name a recent few, with Matvei Michkov and Alexander Nikishin soon expected to follow).
Are wingers at less of a premium than centres and defencemen? Sure, but I’d caution that that’s a dangerous starting point to operate from.
Ultimately, if you can live with the above context — and I think teams now can — then I think the tape and the data make the decision for you.
Here’s why.
The data
I’ll be brief here because the case is pretty definitive. Demidov has one of the strongest pre-draft statistical profiles ever out of Russia. Some will argue that the MHL has watered down as it has added teams over the years, and while that’s true, even within the context of more recent history, his back-to-back regular-season MVPs and 60-points-in-30-games year are close to singular (I actually think the fact Michkov was drafted just last year hurts him because if there was more time between them we’d likely be talking about him as a rarer player). The argument that devalues today’s MHL also weakens side-by-side the fact that when the league’s lower competition was weeded out by the playoffs, his production persisted at a singular level, leading SKA to an MHL championship and leading the playoffs in goals (11), points (28) and plus/minus (+19) despite his postseason being cut short in Game 4 of the final (it was really more like 28 points in 16 playoff games than 17 because he only played 3:05 in the 17th).
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In Byron Bader’s model, which adjusts for league, he earns a rare “superstar” tag. In the data, he actually presents closer to Celebrini than he does to the top D in the class in Zayne Parekh, Zeev Buium and Artyom Levshunov, players who also had among the best-ever seasons in the OHL and NCAA for players their age.
According to Bader’s model, the number of players who’ve ever looked like Demidov does below is, well, an exclusive list of the best prospects in the sport’s history. That’s not hyperbole. I messaged Bader before running this to see who the next closest comps were to the five almost impossible-to-believe players listed as his best comps below. The names he said would be next? Connor Bedard, Jack Eichel, Jack Hughes. “Basically a list of straight superstars. (Phil) Kessel is the worst one.”
Note: If Kessel is the floor of the statistical profile, we’re still talking about a player who leads the 2006 draft class in goals (413) and sits third in points (992).
The tape
Note: Demidov wears No. 11 in all clips.
At the centre of Demidov’s game is his handling ability. Any evaluation of him starts there.
He’s the most purely-skilled on-puck handler in the draft for me (with Beckett Sennecke and Trevor Connelly as the only two who are even close, and Berkly Catton, Macklin Celebrini and Tij Iginla after them) and one of the best I’ve ever seen at this age.
He beat more players and goalies one-on-one this year than any other player in the draft and possesses an uncanny ability to make guys miss. His style is a little less head-on than Sennecke, who goes directly at guys and tries to beat them with pure puck skill rather than beating them laterally with pulls and side-steps like Demidov (Sennecke’s style will be the harder of the two to replicate up levels).
Here are half a dozen flashes of that brilliant handling ability resulting directly in goals to whet your appetite.
When they don’t result in goals, his ability to force opposing players to bite on those lateral moves also results in a ton of drawn penalties. Here are just a few examples:
Demidov is more than just the ultra-talented puck-on-a-string winger, though, too. It sets his ceiling high, but the rest of his tools will help him reach it.
He’s got excellent east-west vision and makes a ton of plays across the slot line to the weak side of coverage, whether that’s finding the trailer, picking teams apart on the power play, or waiting for a guy to get open backdoor:
He makes a lot of little low-to-high plays from below the goal line like these:
Though he’s not an explosive skater or quick twitch accelerator and some wonder if he goes to his heel-to-heel skating mechanic too much, I’ve argued all season that he’s got good speed and I’ve seen him create enough breakaways, get enough steps out wide and make enough plays off the rush like these to be confident in where I’ve landed on his skating as a whole:
If that montage wasn’t enough, here’s one more outside-speed moment into a drawn penalty for good measure:
He’s creative and will try things like this little play off of his skate atop the line:
Or this inventive little spin off the wall:
His ability to get off the wall and to the middle is elite.
He’ll take pucks to the net:
His instincts are to find middle ice instead of drifting to the perimeter:
When he can’t beat his guy to the middle with the puck he’ll play in give-and-gos and beat his guy off the puck to middle ice:
When he doesn’t have a natural lane to that ice himself, he’ll draw two guys and then make a soft play into the open space they leave behind:
His shot is accurate, which makes him a threat off the flank on the power play as more than just the crafty handler/passer type.
He’s comfortable going to his one-timer, which comes off strong even if he’s not Cole Eiserman or Alex Ovechkin from there:
He shoots and scores low a lot, rarely missing the net as a result (here’s a good look at that heel-to-heel skating mechanic I mentioned he goes a lot to as well):
His game isn’t just about the gift for offence and play creation that he has, either.
I actually quite like Demidov’s off-puck play and defensive habits.
He’ll win lanes and body positioning off of faceoffs (an important responsibility as a winger):
He’s got a great sense of timing and often arrives at pucks exactly when he should. Watch how patient he is to sit back on the two times he arrives at a pass in this sequence (the first one bounces past him but the second time it pays off):
He’s got a good stick and disrupts a lot of passes like this:
He fills space and intercepts a lot of pucks like this:
He tracks back consistently and will hustle to lift pucks on back pressure like this:
He wins lost battles on re-takes like this (notice how, after bobbling this puck and losing stick position, he works to regain it and gets his foot in):
His battle level is consistently good (he’s not going to dominate that way, but he’ll contribute).
His hands are on display in another beautiful finishing moment here but I actually decided to include this clip because I liked the way he got up and re-engaged in the battle at the start of this sequence:
He keeps himself engaged and finishes his routes after he gets rid of a puck, an extremely important detail that is on display here (where many young players straighten up after passing here, he stays on his rail and pushes through to the far post):
He’ll take a hit to make a play (and in this case draw a penalty):
He gets on pucks and finds them:
He consistently follows through to get stick on puck. This sequence is particularly telling of his stick detail at an early age. Here, he twice disrupts an attempt to clear and also gets up and under a stick to disrupt a third attempt:
When he tracks forward, he challenges guys head-on instead of blowing by them, another important habit. Here are two different examples of that, the second resulting in a “lucky” goal except for the fact he created his own luck by forcing the turnover at the top of the zone because he met the opposing player head-on:
Over the course of a game, those things drive his offence just as much as his ability to create magic.
That familiar five-hole flank shot is pretty here, sure, but it’s his board play in the corner that I like:
Same idea here. We remember the nice finish here but it’s his defensive play at the top of the offensive zone that sets it up:
And when a combination of things I’ve touched on come together, it’s a beautiful thing. Here’s the handling, the interior approach, and the timing all coming together across different moments in a 10-second span:
I rest my case, your honor.
(Photo: Maksim Konstantinov / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
