Ivan Demidov: his coach says he plays “almost as well as Connor McDavid”.

Dose
Crédit: SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA - 2024/09/23: Ivan Demidov (91) SKA Hockey Club seen in action during the Hockey match, Kontinental Hockey League 2024/2025 between SKA Saint Petersburg and Avangard Omsk at the Ice Sports Palace. (Final score; SKA Saint Petersburg 4:1 Avangard Omsk). (Photo by Maksim Konstantinov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Ivan Demidov’s playing time in Russia has been the talk of the town since the start of the season. The youngster seems to be shunned more often than not by his coach, even though he plays great hockey when he’s on the ice.

This isn’t unusual in Russia, especially for youngsters who want to go to America, but it’s a shame all the same.

Over the last few games, Roman Rotenberg’s approach has changed. The coach is using Demidov more and more, to the point where the latter has played at least 14 minutes in five of his last six games.

On Thursday, he played almost 16 minutes… including time on the powerplay. That’s a drastic change.

And in a recent press briefing, Rotenberg was asked about this… which prompted him to go ahead with a rather, shall we say, peculiar statement:

Do you watch Oilers games? Do you watch McDavid’s and Draisaitl’s playing time? It’s about the same as Demidov’s. – Roman Rotenberg

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Good.

If we look at Draisaitl, he spends around 21 minutes on the ice per game. In McDavid’s case, we’re talking about 20 minutes.

In Demidov’s case, we’re celebrating the fact that he exceeds… 14 minutes. I’m willing to believe that KHL teams play with 13 forwards, but that doesn’t justify the difference.

Perhaps Rotenberg was referring to McDavid’s recent ice time… who missed a few games due to injury. That could be… just as he could have been mistaken and meant Jeff Skinner (14:33) and Viktor Arvidsson (15:55).

Seriously, though, there are two ways of looking at this. You could say that he’s still trying to silence the (many) critics of the kid‘s playing time… but you could also say that he sees Demidov as a guy who can influence the outcome of a game in the same way as the Oilers’ two stars.

It’s up to you to decide whether you prefer the more optimistic or the more pessimistic version.

Overtime

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– He’s the story of the hour in MLB.

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