Welcome to the 12th week of the Devils playing in Europe, not North America. While everyone wastes away wishing for the NHL and NHLPA to come to a deal, Europeans are reaping the benefits of NHL caliber players in Europe. However, there have been reports about NHL teams suggesting that their players come back from Europe. Several players even came back this week. Is this a good sign or is it just more noise? However, there are no reports of the Devils asking their players to come back, the Devils still have several players abroad.
The Devils abroad have been very quiet this week. Check out their stats below.
Statistics
Player | League | Team | GP | G | A | P | PIM | +/- |
Ilya Kovalchuk | KHL | SKA St. Petersburg | 26 | 14 | 18 | 32 | 10 | 16 |
Marek Zidlicky | Czech | HC Kladno | 25 | 3 | 22 | 25 | 25 | 14 |
Artur Gavrus | Belarus | HC Neman | 15 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 0 | 10 |
Vladimir Zharkov | KHL | CSKA Moscow | 31 | 6 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 3 |
Anton Volchenkov | KHL | Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | -3 |
None of the players above managed to put up a point during this week's action. Zidlicky and Gavrus didn't play this week while the rest of the players listed above played in only one game. The only change to the stats from last week was Anton Volchenkov, who picked up 4 penalty minutes.
Kovalchuk Highlights:
Last week Kovalchuk had a fantastic game with two goals and an assist. However, the video wasn't posted before I put up the Week 11 Round-up, So I decided to post it up this week. At the one minute mark of the video Kovalchuk scores his first of the game. Kovalchuk flies over from the side of the ice and gets a pass from Koltsov through three defensemen to his backhand. He then takes the puck and fires it past Ilya Ezhov, who did not stand a chance. At the 1:50 mark of the video, Kovalchuk gets a long pass and turns it into a breakaway and fires a beauty past Ezhov. This ends up being the winning goal, and it was short handed. Another interested note about Kovalchuk is that he is in third place for KHL All Star voting. He is behind Evgeni Malkin and Pavel Datsyuk in voting by about 3,000 votes.
Rank | Player | Power Ranking: Week 11 | Change |
1 | Zharkov | - | |
2 | Kovalchuk | - | |
3 | Zidlicky | - | |
4 | Gavrus | - | |
5 | Volchenkov | - |
No change in the power rankings since no one did anything.
Team Updates
In the Czech league, Zidlicky and HC Kladno are sitting in fifth place. Gavrus and HC Neman have risen to third place, four points away from first place. In the KHL,Torpedo Nizhny is in 9th place in the West. Their playoff chances are dwindling since they are 30 points out of first place. SKA and CSKA are sitting in third and fourth place respectively in the West. Kovalchuk has really propelled SKA into great playoff position. If the NHL players leave before playoffs, it would be a very interesting playoffs in the KHL given that those teams will be quite different without their NHL players.
Overall it was a quiet week for the Devils in Europe. Thanks for reading!