Who is Ilya Mikheyev?

It's European Free Agent season, and naturally the Leafs are right in the thick of things once again.

The organization has shown in the past that they see value in bringing players over from the various European professional leagues for an NHL audition. We've seen this with Nikita Zaitsev, Nikita Soshnikov, Par Lindholm, Igor Ozhiganov, Andreas Borgman, Calle Rosen and Miro Aaltonen in recent years.

It looks like Toronto will try to bolster their depth once again by way of signing another European Free Agent, as news came out that 24 year old right winger Ilya Mikheyev of Avangard Omsk of the KHL is likely going to sign with Toronto (per TSN's Darren Dreger).

But, like, who is he?

The Basics

Well, thanks to the wonderful eliteprospects.com, we can find out some basic information on Mikheyev.

He's 24 years of age and turns 25 on October 10th. If age curves have taught us anything, we know that Mikheyev probably is what he is at this point. He's in the prime of his career in all likelyhood.

He's listed as a right winger, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Leafs tried him out on the left side seeing as he is a left shot and the Leafs lack depth there.

He's also got some good size to him standing at 6'2 and 194lbs.

Now that I've basically just read eliteprospects to you, let's get into the actual analysis.

Statistical Analysis

Mikheyev had 23 goals and 22 assists (45 total points) in 62 games this season in the KHL

Since the KHL isn't the NHL, it's a bit hard to guage how good that exactly is. That's why we have a metric known as "NHLe". I'm not going to go into the depths of explaining the stat to you, but it basically mathematically determines how equivalent a point in "League A" is to the NHL, and hypothetically calculates how much a player in one league would have scored in the NHL. I'm going to use Dobber Hockey's NHLe, which you can find the link to here.

When you plug in in Mikheyev's numbers, it is estimated that Mikheyev would have scored 43 points in a 82 game NHL season. Now, this sounds fantastic, but it's really not as good as it seems. What many people fail to take into account when looking at this metric is ice time.

Mikheyev averaged 19:06 per game with Avangard this season. He's not gonna average that much with the Leafs. If he's playing a depth role on the fourth line, I think a fair estimate is about 9 minutes per game.

NHLe tells us that Mikheyev averaged 0.036 NHL points per minute. Multiply that by 9 minutes x 82 NHL games, and you get about 27 points per 82 games.

Also, the KHL for some reason does not show us how many of his points were on the power play (they show power play goals, but not power play points). Because some of his points were definitely scored on the power play, his even strength numbers are probably even less impessive.

NHLe is not perfect, but I think these numbers paint the picture that Mikheyev will probably more of a depth guy than anything.

If you look at some recent examples, this holds true.

Here's a list of recent players that were around Mikheyev's points per game of 0.73 in the KHL the season before they came over to the NHL, and how they faired the following season in North America:

Red = Small Sample Size (Under 20 Games Played)

As you can see, the list isn't too extensive, but what you have here is:

- Sabotka and Radil. Both guys that scored scored at a high 20-to-low-30 points per 82 game pace (what we projected for Mikheyev earlier using those NHLe numbers and factoring in ice time)

- A good young prospect who is finding his way but all things considered had a pretty good season for a rookie AHLer (Tolvanen). Also, he played 4 NHL games so ignore his NHL PPG.

- Miro Aaltonen, a first line centre on a championship team at the AHL level who probably could've done fine in a fourth line role but didn't play enough like your typical depth player.

Once again, this isn't perfect because of the sample size, but it's more evidence that Mikheyev is probably going to be a depth guy and nothing more.

Scouting Report

Now, if I'm being honest, I have never watched this player play. However, I've done my research and I think we can get a general discription of this player from what I've gathered.

Here's what Jokke Nevalainen of Dobber Prospects has to say about Mikheyev:

"Mikheyev is arguably the best free agent in Europe this season. His KHL contract expires in the spring, and there should be plenty of NHL interest at that point. The 24-year-old winger is a dual threat because he can both make plays and finish them. He has good acceleration and good top speed. His hockey sense is very good as well. He does a good job using his size to protect the puck and win puck-battles along the boards. He can also throw the occasional hit but isn’t known for that style of play. Defensively, he uses his hockey smarts for good defensive reads. He’s a good back-checker, and a capable penalty-killer as well. Mikheyev’s counting stats in the KHL may not look all that impressive but he plays for a low-scoring team, and he’s arguably the best offensive player on the Omsk roster."

And here is what KHL Insider Igor Eronko had to say about Mikheyev on Twitter:

Bob Hartley is a big fan of Ilya Mikheyev. He played him in all situations, Ilya was always on the ice clutch-time. Bob was sure that Mikheyev will get to the NHL someday, but that day will come a bit earlier than he desired, because he's one of the teams' leaders #TMLtalk

So basically, Mikheyev is fast, big, smart, wins his battles, defensively sound, and trustworthy. That sounds like the way that you would describe a lot of NHL depth players, which aligns with our earlier statistical analysis.

Video

After searching Twitter, YouTube and DailyMotion, I have came up with some clips of Mikheyev in action. He's #66 in all clips. It'll be interesting if a move to North America results in a number change.

One thing I noticed about the clips that I could find is that most of them were snipes. Mikheyev looks to have a good shot that can beat goaltenders. He also seems to score aim for a variety of areas. He's not always scoring top shelf. He's also scoring above the pad/below the blocker and through the five hole in a lot of the clips. Again, take them for what they're worth, they're highlights, but those are just a few observations I made.

Something else that I recognized while watching these clips and reading the scouting reports that I attached earlier is that Mikheyev is a good skater. Here are some other highlights that showcase his skating ability:

Another thing that people seem to like about Mikheyev is his smarts. Here's an example of that. Recogizes open space, exploits it and scores.

And one last GIF just for fun: here's a nice shootout goal.

Conclusion

So, to wrap it up, it seems to me that Ilya Mikheyev is going to be a depth NHL player. The numbers seem to project him as a player who is going to score at the same rate as a depth NHL player would. The scouting reports scream "depth player". The highlights, while they are just highlights, showed a pretty fast player with a good shot, but that's kind of it. After a long search, those where the nicest goals/clips that I could find, and while they're not bad clips, there's nothing there that is gonna end up on a highlight reel.

If that dissapoints you, I think that you were maybe hoping for a little too much because that's all that these European free agents tend to be. That does not make it a bad thing to sign European depth players though, I would argue that it's actually a good thing to sign them. Instead of paying a guy like Jay Beagle or Tim Schaller over a million dollars to play on your fourth line, you can instead pay Ilya Mikheyev an entry level contract for cheap.

All in all, Mikheyev is probably going to be a fourth line player, and that's ok. If he proves me wrong and becomes more than that, fantastic!!