Nikolai Stasenko (BLR) -- Belarus did not have as poor an Olympic showing as Latvia or Norway, but if you ignore their handful of NHL players, Stasenko was one of only two players to tally multiple points as well as a +/- above zero. His technical skills are not the most incredible, but he is a large (6'2", 210) lefthanded defenseman who at age 23 still has some room to grow into his game. He is not afraid to do whatever dirty work is asked of him, and that mix of skills and mentality has to be appealing to some GM out there.
Other notables:
Marcel Muller (GER) — A big, lean forward not unlike Sprunger, but much less polished on both ends of the ice, and tries to do too much and overreach to compensate. Potential, sure, but some team would need to be patient with him.
Mathis Olimb & Mats Zuccarello Aasen (NOR) — I bunch these two together because they are very similar players. Olimb (5'10" 175) is a tad bigger than Aasen (5'7" 160) but they play a very similar game - very technically gifted in terms of scoring, especially Zuccarello Aasen and his gorgeous wrist shot, but both catch flak for their lack of defensive ability/desire, which is certainly due in some part to their lack of size. Useful NHLers, but perhaps not durable/versatile enough to be top-end forwards.
Article comments
1 - Jordan Richardson
Cool article.
Stasenko is probably pretty happy making KHL money at the moment (tax free!) and probably won't be looking to jump to the NHL anytime soon, but I agree that he's a heck of a player. I think he might be already too old to jump to the NHL in any sort of meaningful way, too.
Wick probably has as good a chance as any out of this list (save for maybe Müller), but even he might be a little too old at 24 for a club to take a risk at molding him to the NHL style of play. It's hard to get out of that "big ice mode" and a lot of NHL clubs, especially with such a complicated CBA, are reluctant to take risks on new players to the NHL system that are north of 20.
Nice article and good job highlighting some of the good international talent out there. It just goes to show you that the NHL ain't the only game in town with respect to quality players.
2 - nicolas
I think, to be fair, "too old" is a pretty relative term. Obviously when I wrote this I ruled out any players older than 25 because a team would want a player younger rather than older because they could still be...well, rewired.
Wick and Sprunger may not be young at 24, but they're certainly far from the end of their careers, and later success is certainly not unprecedented.
The Sedin twins didnt really start having success until after the lockout, by which point they were 25. Martin St Louis didn't hit his stride as a perennial 30-goal scorer until his fifth NHL season at age 24. Tomas Plekanec didn't find his current offensive groove until his age 24 season.
I think Wick, Sprunger, and Stasenko could all, if they joined NHL teams this offseason, be productive players at that level by the following season. They have the size to be physical and even some room to bulk up, and they already have strong offensive skillsets, which is half the battle. I mean hell, look how much time Ovechkin spends cherry-picking instead of playing defense, and he's still a superstar.