When Mikhail Grabovski first learned that his good friend Nikolay Kulemin intended to attempt an NHL comeback this fall by trying out for the Ottawa Senators, his reaction echoed those heard around the hockey world.
Wait.
What?
“Kind of surprised,” Grabovski told The Athletic this week. “But then I looked at his legs and I said, ‘Oh, probably he can do it still.’ He’s a machine.”
Even with the sizable quads that have powered Kulemin through two decades of professional hockey, it’s a tall order. Consider that nearly seven years had elapsed between his last game with the New York Islanders in November 2017 and his preseason debut for the Senators over the weekend — and that only 10 skaters his age (38) or older managed to play in the NHL last season.
Kulemin spent the past six seasons making a good living back home in Russia and had multiple offers to remain in the KHL but elected instead to leap into the great unknown.
Just as family concerns drove his decision to leave the NHL originally — the chance to play for hometown Metallurg Magnitogorsk in 2018 came with the added benefit of moving his two kids to the city where their grandparents lived — it is another family development that has put him on a path to what he hopes is an unlikely second act in North America.
Kulemin’s son, Aleks, is an aspiring hockey player and faces an important few months ahead with the possibility of being drafted into the OHL after the season. The opportunity to have him spend that draft year playing AAA for the Don Mills Flyers in the Greater Toronto Hockey League was simply too good for the family to pass up.
“I decided this year that I wanted my son to play here in Canada,” Nikolay Kulemin told The Athletic. “It’s a good level of hockey. It’s a fast game here, it’s a little different than Russia. Teams have less players, so it’s like only three lines of forwards and back home it’s four lines. It’s a little more exciting, a little more ice time, so it’s going to be something new for him to go through.”
Nikolay Kulemin played his last NHL game on Nov. 7, 2017. (Jerome Miron / USA Today)
The only challenging part of that equation is that he wasn’t ready to say goodbye to his own playing career just yet.
So with his wife, Natasha, committed to looking after the kids in Toronto, Kulemin sought out an NHL opportunity — eventually landing a PTO from a Senators team looking for more competitive culture-setting veterans. It certainly didn’t hurt that Dave Poulin, Ottawa’s senior vice president of hockey operations, had a positive view of Kulemin’s notoriously strong work ethic and fitness levels thanks to a relationship that dates 15 years to their time together with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
While that opened the door a crack, Kulemin’s PTO comes with no promises beyond a plane ticket to camp, a hotel room to sleep in and a daily $132 stipend for incidentals.
The steep uphill climb he’s facing to a spot on the NHL roster was only underlined by the fact Kulemin was part of the group sent to Toronto for Sunday’s exhibition opener. The Senators opted for a “B” team littered with AHL-level talent and junior players for a game they wound up winning 6-5 in overtime. Kulemin picked up an assist while, perhaps more critically, not being on the ice for any goals against.
In these early days of training camp, there hasn’t been a lot of dialogue with management or the coaching staff about what they’re looking for. He’s only focused on proving himself up to the challenge.
“Just show my best and show that I still can do it,” Kulemin said. “Still can produce. Still can keep up with all of these young guys and the speed (of the game).”
Throughout his 10-year NHL career, he was known as a conscientious two-way forward who could win puck battles along the wall and serve as a steadying presence on a line. Even during a 30-goal, 57-point campaign with the Maple Leafs in 2010-11 — a season he now cites as a career highlight because of how seamlessly things clicked with Clarke MacArthur and Grabovski — there wasn’t a lot of flash to Kulemin’s game.
“He’s just reliable always,” Grabovski said.
Mikhail Grabovski and Nikolai Kulemin celebrate a goal in 2011. (John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
Over the past three years with Salavat Yulaev Ufa in the KHL, you could basically set a watch to Kulemin’s production, with seasons of 14, 13 and 13 goals and 27, 28 and 25 points.
“I just try to prepare myself every year,” Kulemin said. “Just keep in good shape in the summer. Just keep training and take less rest every year. To be professional you have to take seriously every little thing. You have to live it. You have to train. You have to rest well. You have to eat well.
“There’s no secrets.”
Whether this marks the end of the road or the opening of a new door remains to be seen.
The Senators are approaching the situation with an open mind and might consider extending Kulemin an opportunity to join AHL Belleville if he doesn’t end up with one of 23 available roster spots in Ottawa by opening night. It’s not yet clear if he’d be open to that, though.
While some might wonder why he’d even attempt a NHL comeback after so much time away, Kulemin insists he wouldn’t be at Senators training camp if he wasn’t serious about winning a job.
And he’s got an old friend in his corner who believes he can still be of service if deployed in the proper role and judged under the right circumstances.
“At this age, he already has so much experience and calmness,” Grabovski said. “You just come and you do your best. The coach tells you how many minutes you play and you do it. I think Kulie already knows he’s not going to score 30 goals in a season, right?
“He just needs to be a fourth-line player.”
He will have beaten considerable odds if he can even make that happen.
(Top photo courtesy of the Ottawa Senators)