At age 17, there’s a good chance Yan Kuznetsov is the youngest freshman in Division I men’s hockey. To make things even more difficult, he’s in a foreign land, playing a foreign game. It’s not just that the style of play is different in the United States compared to his homeland of Russia, but the game itself is altered.
“In Russia, we have bigger ice sheets, there are more tactical plays. Not as much back-and-forth, more positioning. You stay in one zone and go back. The sheet is bigger and not everything is that fast,” Kuznetsov said. “Here, if you have an opportunity to shoot, you shoot because it’s a closer distance.