As reported on Friday, Montreal Canadiens prospect Ivan Demidov was benched during SKA St. Petersburg's 1-0 defeat against Dynamo Msk, and the situation became the talk of the hockey world—not just in Montreal but also in Russia, where coach Roman Rotenberg addressed the situation.
In a lengthy press conference, the coach explained that he wants Demidov to "play for the team" adding that if a player scores 30 goals but has a minus-five rating, he's not a great player.
Clearly, SKA's coach does take the plus/minus rating with a grain of salt. While that stat can sometimes be telling, there are times where a player did everything he had to do but the defensive breakdown came from someone else. Still the minus hits the five players on the ice.
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Demidov was minus-three in the 7-2 defeat against Spartak and that's apparently why Rotenberg elected to "teach him a lesson". The coach added that the right winger would play on Sunday in the team's next game and that he would have to work for the team.
While this is the official "party line" so to speak, there are others who believe SKA is simply trying to put pressure to get Demidov to sign a contract extension and then get the Canadiens to pay a handsome financial compensation to get him out of the deal.
Officially, the Canadiens are not allowed to do that, but according to BPM Sports' George Laraque, it's been done before and it will be done again. The former enforce believes the Philadelphia Flyers had to cough up cash to get Matvei Michkov to get to this side of the pond early.
According to Laraque, that strategy would also allow SKA to keep the player's rights in the KHL. Needless to say that news of a contract extension for Demidov would send shockwaves all the way to Montreal and probably leads to a collective meltdown from the fans.
Demidov's desire to join the Canadiens as soon as possible is not in doubt though, he has repeatedly said he would see his current contract to the end, but he's already refused to put pen to paper on a extension a few times.
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