Avs take bad-bounce loss Russian, 21, the center of Roy’s close attention
Mikhail Grigorenko had just turned 17 when he left his family behind in Russia and journeyed to Quebec City to play major junior hockey. The path isn’t unusual for young Russians hoping to make the NHL, but only two non-North American players are allowed on each roster in the three leagues under the Canadian Hockey League umbrella.
As the second overall choice in the CHL’s “import” draft, Grigorenko settled in under the often sharp-edged tutelage of Quebec Remparts coach Patrick Roy during the 2011-12 season and began an indoctrination to the North American game. One month into that season, his mother came over from Moscow to live with him in
an apartment, so that helped. But Roy, the Hall of Fame former goaltender coaching teenagers in his hometown, remained Grigorenko’s hockey mentor.
“Everybody knows who he is, everywhere in the world where they know hockey a little bit,” the soft-spoken Grigorenko, now 21, said recently at Family Sports Center. “I was really excited, especially because he had a little bit of history of Russian players playing for him in juniors.”
Roy’s top Russian star during his eight coaching seasons at Quebec was the enigmatic Alexander Radulov, now playing in the Kontinental Hockey League but who possibly will return to the NHL next season after his contract with CKSA Moscow expires.
“You always appreciate seeing these guys making this sacrifice,” Roy said. “I just thought Grigo really adapted well to Quebec. There’s one thing you have to appreciate about these (Russians). They know what they want, they believe it’s the best thing for their career, and Grigo came in and a lot of good things happened.”
“Underachiever” label
After scoring 40 goals in his first Quebec Major Junior Hockey League season, Grigorenko went to the Buffalo Sabres as the 12th overall choice of the 2012 draft. He played 33 more games with Quebec and 25 with Buffalo the next season, and has been trying to dodge the “underachiever” label since.
Grigorenko last summer came to the Avalanche in the Ryan O’Reilly trade, and that background — and more — helps explain why Roy at times can seem exasperated with the play of his young center with Colorado. They go back to Grigorenko’s season and a half in major junior, where a coach — famous former player or otherwise — is part father figure, part teacher, part prodding antagonist.
“I think he was trying to be even with everyone," Grigorenko said of Roy at Quebec. “But I was there by myself, it was a new lan- guage and he was trying to support me. In my draft year, he was really trying to help me learn English, to get better as a player, to learn different aspects of the game that I didn’t know before.”
It’s especially complicated when a center of such promise at times seems disinclined to play with enough fire to take advantage of his unquestioned talent. Grigorenko was spotted as precocious in Moscow, after he and his family moved to the nation’s capital from his birthplace, Khabarovsk, in eastern Russia, when he was 7.
“I don’t think (Roy) has any special commitment to me or something like this, but he knows what I am capable of,” Grigorenko said. “He knows that I can be a really good player, so I guess that when he sees I’m not what he would like me to be, I guess he’s a little bit harder on me. But I think that’s a good thing.”
Grigorenko, who has two goals and 10 assists in 40 games for the Avalanche, was a healthy scratch against New Jersey on Thursday and Columbus on Saturday. If he’s dropped off the top three lines, he’s ill-suited to center the energy fourth line.
At least so far, that’s not helping validate the Avalanche’s deal for O’Reilly, in which Jamie McGinn also went to the Sabres, and Colorado also received defenseman Nikita Zadorov, 20, who was recalled from San Antonio Wednesday; the rights to University of Michigan captain J.T. Compher; and a second-round draft choice.
The trade will be back in the spotlight Wednesday, when the Sabres will be in town to face the Avalanche.
“I wasn’t the main piece, probably, in that trade,” Grigorenko said. “There was Zadorov, a lot of guys, in it. There are a lot of good young players in the Buffalo organization, so I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that I ended up here. Probably Patrick knew me and knew how to work with me and we had a pretty good relationship in Quebec, so I think that was a big factor.”
Roy has continued to challenge Grigorenko to play harder.
“In junior, I was always hard on my players because they wanted to become NHL players,” Roy said. “Even if they aren’t NHL players, they can become great citizens, and you want to help them accomplish that. ... If you want to play at the NHL, you have to be consistent, you have to play hard every night, you have to make those sacrifices.
“I see a lot of talent in Grigo, and I felt that if he could defend well, that would give him the best chance to play ar the NHL level.” And now? “The thing we worked hard at in junior was his level of competing,” Roy said. “He’s a lot better at competing, but the one thing I want to see him improving is his speed.”
Constructive criticism
Grigorenko accepts the criticism as constructive.
“Always when a coach talks about you, it means he cares, whether it’s a good comment or bad comment,” Grigorenko said. “If he’s happy about you or not happy about you, he still cares. Especially when he says I should win more battles, shoot more, I should do this; it means he thinks I’m capable of doing those things. I take it well, I take it that the coach believes in me.”
One striking thing in the Avalanche locker room is that Grigorenko and Zadorov, who also left Russia to play major junior with the London Knights, have made stunning progress in picking up the English language. In Grigorenko’s case, that’s because at Quebec City, Roy — the French-Canadian coaching in a Francophone city — insisted on those lessons to prepare his non-Englishspeaking players for careers in a sport in which the everyday languages in practices and elsewhere are English and profanity.
“That’s part of the journey,” said Roy. “You have to be able to communicate.” Grigorenko smiled. “The first day at Quebec, I met everybody,” he said. “The second day, he told me I had to have English classes every day, three hours, five days a week. It wasn’t really a choice. I had a good teacher, I picked it up pretty quick, and the guys helped me too. I watched movies, I watched TV shows, ... and here I am.”