Once upon a time, the Calgary Flames seemed to shy away from players from the Russian Federation. Any hesitancy appears to be gone, though, as the Flames added the fifth Russian to their reserve list in the past 13 months when they selected Ilya Nikolayev at the 2019 NHL Draft.
Through a translator, Nikolayev shared is excitement about joining the Flames with the assembled media at Rogers Arena.
“I’ve looked into the city before and the team, and this is a great team and great organization. I’m very happy to be with that team,” said Nikolayev. “The NHL agent Dan Milstein has shown a lot of interesting places about, and he’s told him interesting tings about Calgary, about the city.