Thanks Doogie … you’re absolutely right.

Well, there are a number of things going on here. First we have to ask why the numbers were so inflated to begin with. Answering that question partially explains the subsequent drop.

The collapse of the Soviet Union lead to the top players making waves over here in the NHL. What then transpired was a bit of xenophilia and heavy drafting of Russian talent (the number of Russians drafted starting declining before the problems with the transfer agreement). You had guys like Maxim Balmochnykh and Alex Boikov who ended up playing 10 games or less. Do Leafs fans remember Dmitri Yakushin? Probably not. We don’t really see that anymore. That should explain the peak.

The second question is of course why the talent pool seems to be drying up so substantially. I’d like to say that when that original wave of talent didn’t pan out NHL teams started to wisen up – I can’t say that with a straight face.

The significant declines begin with the rise of the Russian Superleague and with the transfer agreement controversies.

The RSL/KHL has had a substantial impact in that the borderline NHL talent could make decent money back home, and so would stay back instead of opting for life in the AHL (and experience the brief call-ups that might come with the minor league career). This really only started to gain momentum as the price of oil went up and Russia as a whole had more money to invest in professional sports (a barrel of oil went for about $25 in 2000; by 2008 it was $125). This is why the decline starts slightly before the transfer agreement controversies of 2003 onward – the players were choosing to stay. The KHL isn’t seriously competitive for top players, but it does compete for middle-of-the-road players.

The transfer agreement becomes a problem insomuch as it limits those players who do want to come over and take the chance – they can’t do so freely anymore.

However, I don’t think the transfer agreement has gone unsigned long enough for there to have been a disastrous impact on the number of Russians… yet. That graph line will most certainly drop lower and lower. Because of the rightful fears of GMs in signing draft picks, retiring players aren’t going to be matched one-for-one by new draft picks.

We could see the number of Russian players dwindle to under 20. MOR talent simply won’t make it to these shores. The players that will be over here will be the elite talents – guys that are worth taking chances on (Filatov, Ovechkin, Malkin, etc.).

As for the talent pool… well, you’d have thought that the infrastructure collapse in the 1990s would have killed Russian hockey. Somehow they still ended up with incredible players and a pretty decent junior program (remember that Canada wasn’t exactly the dominant team in the late 90s and early 2000s at the U-20s). There arguably hasn’t been a drop-off.

But there was still a transfer agreement in place when the decline started, wasn’t there?

Scoring decreased the first two years after the high-scoring first year after the lockout, and then went back up this year to about 5.70 goals per game. It was down to around 5.35 prelockout.