Everybody in the NHL would love to find a Cale Makar after the young, prodigiously talented defenseman helped push Colorado to the Stanley Cup a season ago.
While Denton Mateychuk has heard plenty of comparisons to the Avs star, he says he more models his game after Boston standout Charlie McAvoy and Vancouver's Quinn Hughes.
Prospect Report: Mateychuk is filling up the stat sheet
First-round pick profiles as a modern NHL blueliner who can play in both zones
If Mateychuk ends up being like any of those three elite NHL blueliners, the Blue Jackets will be quite happy with the defenseman they chose 12th overall in the 2022 NHL Draft.
But there's no denying there's plenty of reasons to be excited with the pick of Mateychuk, a smooth-skating blueliner with offensive touch who can simply take over games at the junior level.
"When I watch Quinton Hughes, I see some similar things in our game," he told Dylan Tyrer on the latest edition of the Pipeline Podcast. "Charlie McAvoy also. I really like the way he plays the game. He's always up in the rush and he's a really good defender as well. He does a lot of things in the D-zone. That's the guy I want to be like at the NHL level.
"I think I'm a two-way defenseman. I like to join the rush, make good passes to help get out of the D-zone, keep good gaps to also help shut down the play as quick as possible and just play all over the ice and be a good two-way defenseman."
Mateychuk has 109 points in 109 games the past two seasons with Moose Jaw of the WHL, following last year's 13-51-64 line in 65 games with a 6-49-55 mark in 54 games this year. Mateychuk also is the captain of the Warriors, taking on a leadership role in his fourth season with the squad.
Listen to Mateychuk's path into high-level hockey, his ties to sports outside of the rink, plus much more about the highly thought-of Blue Jackets prospect in the latest edition of the Pipeline Podcast.
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The Pipeline Podcast: Denton Mateychuk
Monsters In Playoff Race
The Cleveland Monsters have hit a bit of a skid of late, dropping four of five, but the team remains in the AHL's postseason hunt going into tonight's game at Syracuse.
Cleveland is 22-23-4-2 with 21 games to play going into tonight's contest, good for sixth in the AHL North Division. The top five teams advance to the postseason, with Cleveland just one point behind Laval for the fifth and final spot.
The Monsters dropped a 6-2 final Saturday at Grand Rapids after losing a 7-1 decision Friday at home against Utica. That came two days after another home loss to the Comets, but Cleveland did get a point in a 4-3 overtime setback.
The team's last win came Sunday, Feb. 19, when the Monsters took a 3-2 victory at Chicago. Joona Luoto, Roman Ahcan and Josh Dunne scored in that contest, while Robbie Payne had a pair of assists.
Dunne also scored in the team's last game Saturday at Grand Rapids and has been on a bit of a hot streak, posting six goals in the last nine games for the Monsters.
After tonight's game in Syracuse, Cleveland returns home before playing an outdoor game Saturday at 1 p.m. in the home of the Cleveland Browns, FirstEnergy Stadium (
click here for ticket info
). The team will match up against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the Cleveland Monsters Outdoor Classic before also taking on the Penguins on Sunday at home.
Playoffs Begin in Russia
The end of the KHL season has arrived, with the top league in Europe now moving on to the postseason.
The Blue Jackets boast two players who have regular roles with KHL teams to make the postseason in Ak Bars Kazan forward Dmitri Voronkov and CSKA Moscow defenseman Nikolai Makarov.
Ak Bars finished with the best record in the league's Eastern Conference and will begin things with a best-of-seven series with Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk. Voronkov's play was one of the major factors, as the 2019 fourth-round draft pick posted a career-high 18 goals and 31 points despite missing time with injury at the start of the season.
The massive centerman stepped up his game as the season went on, too, as Voronkov had a pair of two-goal games down the stretch. In all, he had an 8-7-15 line in the last 13 games for the squad.
CSKA, meanwhile, won the Tarasov Division and has the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference behind rival SKA St. Petersburg. After spending most of the season in the junior ranks, Makarov carved out a role with CSKA down the stretch on the blue line, and the 2021 fifth-round draftee finished with a 1-1-2 line and an average of 11:59 per game in 18 contests. CSKA will take on Severstal Cherepovets in the opening round.
Fellow CBJ draft pick Kirill Dolzhenkov (2022 fourth-round pick) did play five games with CSKA but spent most of the season with the junior team, Krasnaya Armiya. The 6-foot-6 Dolzhenkov was a consistent scorer on the junior side, posting a line of 18-27-45 in 50 games to lead the squad in scoring.
Goalie Sergei Ivanov, a 2022 fifth-round pick, made five appearances with SKA during the season, earning one win to go with a 1.12 GAA and .957 save percentage, but he has begun the playoffs with SKA-Neva, the team's top minor league affiliate.
Prospect Notes
- Jordan Dumais set a season high with seven points -- including four goals -- in an 11-2 win over Moncton Feb. 19 to break the 100-point barrier on the season and move into the CHL lead for points over presumed No. 1 overall pick Connor Bedard. But two scoreless games over the weekend -- just the seventh and eighth of the season for the 2022 third-round draft pick -- now leave Dumais five points behind Bedard at the top of the chart. Dumais has tied his mark from last year with 109 points, posting 44 goals and 65 assists thus far in 52 games, while Bedard boasts a 54-60-114 line in 45 games.
- While Bedard continues to shine with Regina of the WHL, his teammate Stansilav Svozil is also racking up the points. The 19-year-old 2021 third-round pick of the Jackets has a 9-55-64 line in 44 contests, and the defenseman has scored goals in four of the last five games for the Pats. Svozil has posted a 4-10-14 line in his last seven games and is tied for fourth in the league in helpers.
- It took Luca Del Bel Belluz some time to settle in after a midseason trade to Sarnia, but the 2022 second-round pick is starting to fill up the stat sheet. Del Bel Belluz went seven games without a goal after the trade but now has 14 tallies in his last 14 games with the Sting, including three two-goal games and a hat trick in that span. Del Bel Belluz now has a total of 34 goals in 55 OHL games this year between Sarnia and Mississauga.
