Hillier, Cheveldayoff credit Jets scouting staff following unique season

WINNIPEG - In a challenging year to scout players, Winnipeg Jets General Manager, Kevin Cheveldayoff, and Director of Amateur Scouting, Mark Hillier, couldn't say enough about the work of the staff.
In fact, their commitment to dive right into video scouting early on in the season - especially while the North American hockey leagues weren't playing - might have led to how things played out on Day 2 of the NHL Draft.
Prior to Saturday, the Jets had only drafted two Russian players - Pavel Kraskovsky in 2014 and Mikhail Berdin in 2016. By the end of the day, the Jets had doubled that output, selecting right-wingers Nikita Chibrikov and Dmitri Rashevsky from Russia in the second and fifth rounds respectively.
On top of that, the Jets added defenceman Dmitri Kuzmin of Belarus to the prospect pool as well.

"Really it came down to opportunity to draft players where they were," said Cheveldayoff. "We don't draft by the passport, thus we've picked three players in this draft that many would have thought we wouldn't have picked before."
Each prospect seems to have their own storyline as well.

In Chibrikov, the Jets are getting a winger Cheveldayoff describes as driven, and someone that Hillier feels has elite hockey sense.
"He's a player that finds the right routes to the puck. He's always in the right spot offensively. Pays the price to score goals," said Hillier. "He was really good at the Under-18 tournament at the end of the year where we had a good contingent of scouts there to see live games."
Speaking of the Under-18 event, that's where the Jets scouting staff saw the skill of 5'10" defenceman, Kuzmin. He scored the famous 'lacrosse-style' goal in that tournament, something he told Cheveldayoff shortly after being drafted that he's done three times.
Kuzmin will play for the Flint Firebirds (who selected him 46th overall in the 2020 CHL Import Draft) of the Ontario Hockey League next season.
"He would have been over here last year if the OHL had played. That's always been his intention," said Cheveldayoff. "He's not the tallest player. He's got good thickness to him, good strength to him, so we project he's got a pro style of body along with the skill."
Speaking of skill, the Jets see a lot of it in their last of four picks in the 2021 NHL Draft - Rashevsky.
Passed over in the 2019 and 2020 NHL Drafts, Rashevsky scored 44 goals in 2019-20 in the MHL (Russia's junior league) with MHK Dynamo St. Petersburg.
He's 20-years-old, but Cheveldayoff said the 6'1" winger is willing to come to North America and play in the American Hockey League to continue his development following the final year of his contract - which goes through next season.
Hillier feels Rashevsky's skating has improved over the last two years and is the classic definition of a late bloomer.
"He still needs to continue getting stronger, but this is a guy we're really intrigued about," Hillier said. "A year ago at this time he wasn't quite as heavy or powerful."
But that's where all the video work from the scouting staff came in.

Hillier - like Cheveldayoff earlier in the week - credited the work of Barrett Leganchuk, the team's Scouting Coordinator, for getting all the game footage dispersed in a timely fashion all season long.
"Weekly, I would send out "Let's watch this guy" or we'd send out five games of a certain guy and say "Hey, if you can get these done this week and then we'll get to the next group of players," said Hillier. "The hard thing all year was adapting to the border changes, to the restrictions, to the regulations, to the cancelations, to the postponements. Everybody had to deal with that but we just tried to get through it as best as we can and put the work in."
Add up all the views - live and video - and Hillier believes the Jets scouting staff has seen more hockey the past season than in normal seasons, just not as many live views as would normally be the case.
For him specifically, living in Eastern Canada, any trip over the border meant a two-week quarantine. His adjustment to video wasn't easy either.
"When I'm at a live game, I like to sit at the end of the rink, you know, up in the corner, at the end of the rink," said Hillier. "Most of the video you see is from the side so that's an adjustment. But with all our work, collaboratively, with all of the scouting staff, we would mix the opinions live to video and come up with the best we could on skating, hockey sense, the skill portions, and everything."
That's why these weekends are so important, not only for the organizations, but the scouting staffs as well.
It's the culmination of a long season of work, whether it was in the rink or on a laptop.
"I have to give all our scouts a lot of credit," said Hillier. "We had a lot of passion for these players. I've said before it doesn't matter where they come from, if we have a passion to take the players and think they're the best players. We feel really good about the talent and the skill we added to the group."