“The Russians are a bit of a different animal,’’ Ron Hextall was saying the other day, and for once, thankfully, the context was not about election meddling or foreign policy or even global warming.
Hextall was addressing the difficulty in evaluating teenage talent from there, especially the players good enough to make a KHL roster, even if they might be better served playing elsewhere.
“When they’re playing the KHL you’ve got a kid playing against men in a top league,’’ the Flyers General manager was saying. “And they keep them down on a fourth line and give them seven minutes.