American right winger Reid Boucher, 31, signed a one-year contract to play for Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, the KHL club announced on June 3.

The upcoming season will be Boucher’s sixth in the KHL, and Avtomobilist will be his third team. In five seasons with Avangard Omsk and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, Boucher had 309 points and 256 penalty minutes in 337 KHL regular-season and playoff games. He was a member of Omsk’s 2021 Gagarin Cup championship team and led the KHL with 44 goals in 2023-24.

Born in Grand Ledge, Mich., Boucher didn’t have to travel far to attend USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program, which was based out of Ann Arbour, Mich. when Boucher attended from 2009 to 2011. Boucher had 10 points in six games as USA won a gold medal at the 2011 IIHF U-18 World Championship.

Boucher was taken in the fourth round, 99th overall, by the New Jersey Devils in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft. Between 2013 and 2019, he recorded 42 points and 18 penalty minutes in 133 NHL games with the Devils, Nashville Predators and Vancouver Canucks.

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In February 2022, Boucher was sentenced to four years probation and one year of suspended jail time in Washtenaw County, Mich., after earlier pleading guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct against a minor. The conviction stemmed from two incidents that occurred in 2011 when Boucher, then with the National Development Program, forced his then-”billet sister” to perform sexual acts on him. Boucher was 17 at the time, while his “billet sister” was only 12.

Boucher had originally been charged in the first degree, which would have carried a sentence of 25 years in prison, before the overseeing judge allowed his lawyers to enter a plea deal that reduced the charges due to “unusual circumstances”.

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Later that month, Boucher was released by Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, despite leading the team at the time with 27 points in 46 games. Had it not been for the charges against him and associated publicity, Boucher likely would have been considered to play for Team USA at the 2022 Olympics, in which NHL players did not participate.

The following season, however, Boucher was back in the KHL, where he has played ever since.

In Yekaterinburg, Boucher will join former Vancouver teammate Nikita Tryamkin. The team also has under contract ex-NHLers Stéphane Da Costa and Nick Merkley.

Photo © John Hefti-Imagn Images.

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