Canadian-Kazakh defenseman Darren Dietz, 31, has signed a contract to play the remainder of the current season with Avtomobil Yekaterinberg, the KHL club announced on Sunday.
The Canadian-born Dietz has played in the KHL since 2017 and became a naturalized citizen of Kazakhstan.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB-tTzEGRsI[/embed]
Born in Medicine Hat, Alta, Dietz played junior hockey for the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades and was selected in the fifth round, 138th overall, by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.
From 2013 to 2017, Dietz played mostly in the AHL but did suit up for 13 NHL games with the Habs in the 2015-16 season, scoring once and adding five assists and 13 penalty minutes. His NHL rights were later moved to the Washington Capitals and Dallas Stars.
Over 446 KHL regular-season and playoff games with Barys Astana, CSKA Moscow and Avangard Omsk, Dietz has scored 88 goals and added 145 assists and 443 penalty minutes. He is a two-time Gagarin Cup champion with CSKA.
During his five years playing for Kazakhstan-based Barys, Dietz was one of several import players who were granted Kazakh citizenship for the purpose of strengthening the national team. Others who played with Dietz include Canadian-born Martin St. Pierre, Dustin Boyd, Jesse Blacker and Curtis Valk, US-born Brandon Bochenski and Swedish-born Viktor Svedberg and Henrik Karlsson.
Dietz played for Kazakhstan at the 2019 IIHF World Championship Division I Group A at home in Astana, which Kazakhstan won to advance to the elite group. He then played in the top-level World Championships in 2021 and 2022. Since then, Kazakhstan has not selected naturalized players for its national team.
Yekaterinberg sits third out of 11 teams in the KHL’s Eastern Conference. The team’s roster includes ex-NHLers Brandon Leipsic, Nikita Tryamkin, Stéphane Da Costa and Nick Merkley, as well as Dietz’s former teammates Blacker and Valk. It also includes NHL prospects Semyon Kizimov (Toronto Maple Leafs), Maxim Denezhkin (Edmonton Oilers) and Yevgeni Kashnikov (San Jose Sharks).
As a citizen of Kazakhstan – one of four countries that have KHL teams – Dietz is considered a domestic player by KHL rules, and therefore does not count against a team’s quota of import players.