2022 NHL Draft Profile: Pavel Mintyukov
THE NUMBERS
Mintyukov had an impressive first season in North America, leading his team in scoring with 62 points (17 goals) and dominant even-strength production. Mintyukov is late-birthday, which makes him of the oldest players in the draft. Choosing some of the youngest players in the draft can be a good strategy to find prospects who may have more room to grow physically and in their game (example for this draft: July to early September 2004 born players), but Thibaud Chatel and Byron Bader made interesting researches, showing that dominant late birthday players in their draft season (September 16 to December 2003 for this draft) have good % ratio to turn into NHL players or star. I'd recommend this read for more on the subject.
VIDEO ROOM
OFFENSIVE PLAY
BREAKOUT RETRIEVALS
Mintyukov's defensive zone puck retrievals abilities are really good. His patience and small-area skills allow him to beat F1 and attract F2 before using his strong passing skills, creating a numerical advantage for his team after his first pass. Additionally, he uses his strength well to own lanes and be first on the puck to make plays.
NEUTRAL ZONE TRANSITION
Mintyukov moves the puck well, but he's at his best when activating and joining the rush with his off-the-puck play. He's great at exploiting open space and playing between checks, creating odd-man situations on the rush for his team.
OFFENSIVE ZONE PLAY
Bets part of Mintyukov’s game. Like in neutral zone transition, Mintyukov is dominant when he activates and plays as a rover in the offensive zone. He's always moving without the puck, creating confusion and chaos for the opposing team's defensive structure, which makes his team hard to defend against when he's on the ice. With the puck, he's patient, he can beat players one-on-one and gets off the wall to improve his shooting location.
DEFENSIVE PLAY
RUSH DEFENSE
Overall, Mintyukov has many positive traits when defending the rush. By how active he is in transition when joining the rush, he's able to set a strong gap when his team loses the puck and there's a change of possession. He then can make stops with his skating and physicality.
He needs to improve his stick work when defending the rush with less ''sweeping'' motion, and by using his stick in a more efficient way to influence puck carriers where he wants them to go.
POWER PLAY WORK
PROJECTION
In my opinion, Mintyukov is one of the defensemen with the highest upside in this draft class. Those who have followed my work know I'm a huge believer in active defensemen, so I'm a big fan of defensemen who can activate like him on the rush and in the offensive zone. The area he needs to improve the most is the defensive zone coverage. It has improved throughout the season, but Mintyukov needs to identify situations better and in certain situations, needs to stop in battles instead of reaching for the puck.
With his package of skating, skills, strength, and off-the-puck movement, there's a huge upside in Mintyukov's game.
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