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A Quick Vitali Kravtsov Update

For those of you who don’t know, the KHL preseason is underway, which means we’re getting our first taste of some Vitali Kravtsov in the KHL post-selection in this year’s draft.

Here are the two goals Kravtsov has scored in the past two games:

Here’s him doing some work in the shootout:

And one little piece of magic from the 9th overall pick:

Outside of all that, Kravtsov was named to the preliminary roster for the U20 Four Nations Tournament on behalf of Russia. That will take place August 24th. It will be the first real look at Kravtsov on the Russian national team, since he was foolishly left off last year’s World Juniors roster.

In his short stint with Traktor, Kravtsov has continued to get the top-six minutes and role that he was getting last year in the playoffs. He seems to be playing primarily with 31-year-old Ryan Stoa and the two have some pretty solid chemistry. (Stoa is the one who made the brilliant cross-ice feed to Kravtsov for the second goal in the clips above.) The hope, of course, is that Kravtsov continues to develop (and keep his top-six role) for the rest of the year, before jumping over to North America at the end of his season. For what it’s worth, that seems to be the plan for all parties involved in the KHL.

Alex gives one more quick analysis of the two games below:

And here’s another look from Adam on something Kravtsov can work on:

We also discussed Kravtsov at length with Adam on this week’s podcast, which you can listen to here.

Dog days of summer, y’all.

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