I’m not exactly sure how I find myself writing about the KHL once again in a span of two stories, but in connecting back to my last article on former Montreal Canadiens playing in the KHL, this article also happens to include a former Hab, though it’s one most people admittedly would like to forget.
In almost every sense of the word, Alex Galchenyuk’s career has filled out to that of your typical, run-of-the-mill AHL scorer who every AHL team needs, but most already have. On paper, Galchenyuk’s 2022-23 season looked solid for a typical AHL scorer. 16-26-42 totals over 42 games with the Colorado Eagles, plus an 11-game audition with the Colorado Avalanche, posting no points and a -8 rating over 11 games.
Yet, just 11 years later, Galchenyuk finds himself on the outside looking in, even in the KHL, having purportedly been benched just 3:57 into his sixth game with club SKA St. Petersburg. Having long established itself as one of the top teams in the KHL, St. Petersburg hasn’t shown that thus far this season, and the performance of its NA imports, like Galchenyuk and Brendan Leipsic, are partly to blame. With just 0-2-2 totals and a -5 ratings over his first 7 games, Galchenyuk has brought next to nothing to SKA with inconsistencies on both sides of the puck.
After re-signing with the Coyotes early in this past offseason, Galchenyuk was subsequently arrested after being charged with a DUI whilst celebrating his contract with his father, former minor league Alexander Galchenyuk. Along with threatening police and resisting arrest, Galchenyuk ultimately checked into the NHL’s player rehabilitation program and tried to find himself overseas in Russia.
Well, despite being brought in for his scoring, Galchenyuk hasn’t done any of that thus far, having not played a scoring role for years in the NHL, serving mostly as a failed experiment/defensively liable fourth liner for most teams, a far cry from, as stated, his beginnings in the Canadiens organization.
2011-12 wasn’t the best of seasons for Montreal, to say the least, with a lack of offensive support stifling the Canadiens in spite of a solid season from Carey Price in goal. Aside from the tandem of Max Pacioretty, David Desharnais and one-year wonder Erik Cole, Montreal didn’t have much offensive support, and after a disastrous stint under interim coach Randy Cunneyworth and GM Pierre Gauthier, changes were needed.
After ending up with the third overall pick in what was largely seen as a weaker draft class comparable to past years, the Canadiens still ended up with Galchenyuk, an immensely promising scoring center/winger who could give the Habs consistency and offensive support up front..
After a rough start to his first season in the KHL, it looks likes it’s the end of the road for former Montreal Canadiens prospect Alex Galchenyuk.
In a disastrous top 4 that also included Ryan Murray, Griffin Reinhart, and “Fail for Nail” Yakupov himself (who we now learn was mostly a product of the Oilers horrendous coaching), Galchenyuk looked like the lone bright spot through his first few years in the NHL, and the Canadiens, in a noted change of pace, developed Galchenyuk patiently and appropriately, and he just seemed to get better and better each year. In a 2015-16 season that was mostly lost for the Habs, losing Price to injury early after a hot start and exhausting backup Mike Condon by season’s end, Galchenyuk was one of the few bright spots.
Along with Max Pacioretty getting his usual 30 goals and 60 points, Galchenyuk potted his first 30-goal season and was absolutely on fire by season’s end as Montreal relied on him more and more to carry the team offensively. With an ability to get off a shot from seemingly anywhere, possessing a laser release and pinpoint accuracy, Galchenyuk’s one-timers in 15-16 were a marvel to watch, and it had me and many other Canadiens fans thinking a 40-goal campaign was next.
Well, that didn’t happen, and when I say that didn’t happen, I mean it seems like a drug-induced hallucination to ever think Galchenyuk was once capable of scoring 40 goals. While he continued to post solid numbers with 44 and 51-point campaigns over the next two seasons, Galchenyuk’s work ethic and offensive abilities just seemed to stagnate, and Montreal’s coaches were having a hard time dealing with the influence Galchenyuk’s father was having on his son’s development.
Anderson brings consistency each night, something that’s been hard for Montreal to come across on both sides of the puck. Galchenyuk was… solid in his first season in Arizona, posting another 40-point season with 19-22-41 totals over 72 games. However, that would largely be the last we’d see of Galchenyuk as a reliable offensive player in the NHL.
After that one season, Galchenyuk was again traded to Pittsburgh as a central part of a trade that saw Phil Kessel come to Arizona. While it seemed like Galchenyuk would flourish in Pittsburgh’s high-offence system, he soon found himself permanently stuck in head coach Mike Sullivan’s doghouse, eventually being traded once more at the trade deadline to Minnesota, in a mostly lopsided deal for Jason Zucker.
Since then, Galchenyuk’s career has been a ridiculous and long-winded roadmap, playing for five different NHL teams and two other AHL teams in his last four seasons. A rebuilding Ottawa Senators team initially gave him a shot off a one-year deal, but after posting just 1 goal and a -6 rating over 8 games, he was shipped to the Carolina Hurricanes and then, immediately after, traded to the Maple Leafs. After his first stint in the AHL, where he got a chance to gain his confidence back, the Leafs made Galchenyuk a key part of their middle-six, and he played that two-way role solidly.
While Toronto was likely Galchenyuk’s last shot to find stability, said decent regular season and playoff performance ultimately went up in smoke after kick-starting the Habs first-round comeback in the 2021 playoffs, after a terrible giveaway to Cole Caufield in Game 5 that saw Nick Suzuki score the winner. While Toronto purportedly offered Galchenyuk a six-figure extension in the offseason, he turned it down to look for something better, and well, look how that turned out. Galchenyuk is a player I’ve talked about to no end in my past writing for this site, and every time it seems like he’s about to fade from the public eye, something happens that brings him right back onto my radar, for better or for worse.
In the past, I mentioned how it’s likely his NHL career is over, but now it seems like Galchenyuk’s professional hockey career might be over entirely. With his father (who failed to make the NHL after coming over from Russia to play for the IHL’s Milwaukee Admirals) exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on Galchenyuk both on and off the ice even today, you have to wonder if the mental side of his game is just entirely finished by this point, and if there’s any chance it will ever come back.
When a player is mentally broken, it can be a lot harder to come back production-wise. Galchenyuk is essentially having to re-learn/re-remember on the fly how to be a top-scoring contributor in a competitive professional hockey league, something, again, he hasn’t done for years, barring in mind his brief stint in the AHL last year. And expectations in SKA St. Petersburg are high, just like they were in Montreal. No excuse will be tolerable for poor play.
While there’s always a chance he rekindles some of that magic and performs well once more, it seems highly, if not entirely unlikely, by this point. And if he can’t succeed on a team like SKA, it seems doubtful he could do so in a similarly skilled league, and I doubt a player like Galchenyuk would settle for a league in Slovakia, France, or elsewhere.
In the end, Galchenyuk’s career can be summed up as that ring you drop in the sink and watch spin around and around before falling down the drain. Only no one bothered to pick up the ring or even check if it was still in the drain to begin with. It’s an unfortunate end to a once-promising career, but as the 2023-24 NHL season gets underway, there are just as many Alex Galchenyuk’s floating around the hockey world, failed prospects who once, long ago, were the talk of the NHL off-season.
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