Pavel Buchnevich insisted Tuesday that he believes he is ready to play for the Rangers this season, and that his game can make the jump from Russia’s KHL to the bigger, faster NHL, even if he has plenty of physical work to do.
“If I weren’t sure I wouldn’t come here,” Buchnevich said through translator Nickolai Bobrov, the team’s director of European scouting.
Buchnevich, 21, is the top prospect in the Rangers organization, and was that even when Anthony Duclair was still a Ranger. The team tried to bring him to the NHL last season, but he felt he needed another year of “experience” in the KHL.
Rangers director of player personnel Gordie Clark said Tuesday that Buchnevich will get every opportunity to make the team in training camp.
Buchnevich, who speaks no English and is rooming with prospect Sergey Zborovskiy during this week’s development camp in Greenburgh, will return home for about 10 days, then play with the Rangers in the Traverse City prospects tournament later this summer.
“He was drafted as a high-end hockey-sense hockey player,” Clark said. “With his hands and his sense, his playmaking … his shot is a good shot, maybe not a scorcher, but if you give him the opening he’ll put it in, but his big asset is his mind. He just sees everybody and he’s got the hands to get it there. He’s going to be a power-play guy, maybe in the (Mats) Zuccarello vein of thinking and playmaking and hands, and when the shot is there, he can do that too.
“But he hasn’t trained to play in the best league in the world. He’s got to train as an NHL player. That’s what he’s doing now. I think he was waiting (in Russia) until he got three good years under his belt. He’s an awfully intelligent kid, not just on the ice, but off the ice too. I think he was going to come on his own terms, when he was ready to play. He’ll go out there, and I’m sure he plans on making it.”
Buchnevich agreed with Clark’s scouting report, saying, “I think I am not quite a goal scorer but a thinking player, cerebral player and a playmaker.”
The work he needs to do is in the gym. At 6-foot-2 and 175 pounds, he’s rail-thin, but even watching him do skill drills, you can see the kid can move in traffic, is shifty quick, and has a tremendous pair of hands.
Asked about the adjustment to the NHL, and its smaller rinks, he said, “physical game, less space, less time to make decisions, to make plays. More speed and quickness and fewer drops of the puck and cycles and regroups with the puck as there is less space and more scoring chances because the area is smaller.”
You can tell the kid is serious because he’s been in town for a few days and hasn’t seen New York City yet. He is getting by despite the language barrier, and said his fellow prospects, and the Rangers’ coaching staff – mostly it’s the Hartford coaches, led by Ken Gernander and Jeff Beukeboom, running the camp – have been helpful by teaching through hand gestures.
In Russia, after being traded from Cherepovets to SKA St. Petersburg, the third-round pick from the 2013 draft said that former Devil Ilya Kovalchuk took him under his wing.
“Kovalchuk was very good with me and sent me many text messages, three or four, recently congratulating me about being here,” Buchnevich said, “I communicated with him quite a bit and he was enough of a resource for me.”
The Rangers need some high-end skill, they need some youth and they need some cheap youth because of their cap situation (Buchnevich will carry a cap hit for just $925,000 for each of his first three seasons). It’s probably unfair to expect too much too soon from Buchnevich, but expectations are going to be high. That’s just how it is in New York, and especially with the Rangers and their fans.
Buchnevich seems to have a handle on that. When asked about his own expectations for the coming season, he simply said, “I am focused on the present and the summer and getting in shape and this type of hockey. That is where my focus is now.”
Twitter: @RangersReport.
Photos by Rick Carpiniello.
The post Rangers’ Pavel Buchnevich: ‘If I weren’t sure I wouldn’t come here’ appeared first on Rangers Report.
