Canadiens: Nikita Scherbak and the Free Agent Castoffs

With overseas hockey underway with this NHL season on hold, former Montreal Canadiens forward Nikita Scherbak finds himself as another free agent castoff.

Its been a weird start to this season, or should I say, lack of a start, both for the NHL and the Montreal Canadiens.

After managing to salvage the 2019-20 season and ultimately award a Stanley Cup champion in the Tampa Bay Lightning, the league is now in a limbo of sorts with the start to this season still uncertain. While a proposed start date of January 1st has been discussed, nothing is concrete as of yet, leaving hockey fans to migrate to other televised sports for the time being. However, just because the NHL season hasn’t started, doesn’t mean other leagues haven’t began play.

If you follow the NHL transactions page, you’ll notice a lot of prospects being loaned to European teams, in leagues like the Switzerland’s National and Swiss leagues, the Finnish SM-Liiga, and the one most people will be familiar with, Russia’s KHL, or Kontinental Hockey League. Starting play in 2008-09, the KHL is seen by many as the third best, or even second-best hockey league in the world above the AHL. While I personally don’t agree with this statement, the league has still produced many bona fide NHL stars today like Artemi Panarin, Nikita Gusev, and Igor Shestyorkin.

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The leagues current top players contain a solid mix of NHL and AHL castoffs and homegrown talent, like former Ottawa Senators prospect Stephan Da Costa and Vancouver Canucks farmhand Reid Boucher. However, many similarly notable players find themselves in less favorable positions, like former Edmonton Oilers first overall pick Nail Yakupov, who is now on his third KHL team in two seasons after being traded from Khabarovsk Amur to Omsk Avangard for cash, and, today’s topic, Nikita Scherbak.

Scherbak is a player I have yet to discuss much in both my writings for this website and other endeavors, as he’s very much a remnant of a different time in the Canadiens history. The Moscow native was a first-round pick of the Habs in the 2014 NHL entry draft, after the Canadiens had what many consider to be their best season in recent memory, culminating in an Eastern Conference finals appearance. As with most contending teams, the Canadiens opted to take more of a risk in drafting, selecting players with large upside but noticeable flaws, seeing them as projects they’re willing to undertake.

In a way, Scherbak was one such player, as while he had shown his offensive potential in his junior career in the WHL, he had struggled with the defensive side of his game. However, he did have a high ceiling overall, and was seen as a great pick for Montreal at 26th overall. six years and four teams later however, and Scherbak is left without a home as he remains unsigned well into this year’s off-season. In his three and a half seasons in the Canadiens organization, Scherbak struggled to showcase himself as the offensive threat the Habs had envisioned him to be.

While there were glimpses of his potential, posting 30 points in 26 games to begin the 2017-18 season with the Laval Rocket, he never blossomed into anything beyond said potential. While the Canadiens gave him a chance to prove himself in the NHL during a lost 2017-18 season, Scherbak posted just 6 points over 26 games, even with a nice toe drag goal against the Vegas Golden Knights. With the Canadiens now having to put Scherbak on waivers heading into the 2018-19 season, the Russian right winger was claimed by the struggling Los Angeles Kings, who were hoping he could boost what had been a fledgling offense for most of the season.

While a goal in his first game gave fans hope, he went scoreless in his next seven, being put back on waivers before finishing the season with the AHL’s Ontario Reign. With no NHL takers heading into last year’s off-season, Scherbak opted to sign with Omsk in the KHL, where his struggles continued. After posting 6 points over 16 games with the team, he was released, subsequently signing with Chelyabinsk Traktor to continue his season.

To say Scherbak’s professional career has been rocky is an understatement, and is partially why he remains unsigned with many overseas league’s seasons currently underway. While he’s shown glimpses of his offensive abilities, including some, as stated, nice goals during his time with the Canadiens, he’s yet to become a truly reliable player offensively, never, as stated, playing beyond the potential he once had. While he showed improvements defensively in his time with the Canadiens, it was never enough to compensate for his lack of offense, even in spite of a few highlight reel plays.

Despite this, I doubt Scherbak will remained unsigned for the entirety of this season, with him still being in the prime of his career at 24 years old. However, the question is whether he’d be willing to play in lower level leagues in places like Slovakia, France, Italy, or even in the KHL’s AHL equivalent, the VHL. In Montreal, Scherbak’s personality issues caused him to have riffs with Canadiens management, and never put in full effort during his stints in the AHL, something which has continued to plague him overseas.

Now simply looking for a team interested in his services, he’ll will have to readjust both the on and off-ice aspects of his game, should he look to salvage some of that potential he once had  as a first round pick. Whether it be in a lower league or back in the KHL remains to be seen, but either way, Scherbak has a long way to go to become more, than another free agent castoff.