Just Who Was Nail Yakupov? Part 1

Introduction

Nail Yakupov has been an enigma. He has immense skill but hasn’t had tremendous success in Edmonton. He’s fascinating to me in just how polarizing he is. Many people whose opinion I respect fall on opposite sides of this debate. Was just he misused and let down by the organization? Did he simply fail to live up to expectations and earn more ice-time on merit? Was it all Dallas Eakins’ fault?

I, myself, am undecided on Yak. I’ve watched him grow and develop over the last four years. So, now that he’s gone, I decided to take on a larger project. I am digging deeper into Yakupov’s time in Edmonton to at least come to my own conclusion.

This series is broken up into four parts, due to extreme length. Part 1 (the shortest) is this introduction, Yakupov’s pre-draft years and the KHL. His rookie season under Ralph Krueger is covered in Part 2. Part 3 is his years under Dallas Eakins and Todd Nelson. The final part is this last year under McLellan and a summary of all the findings.

I’m going to say off the top that it will be stats heavy. My hope is to take a look at the numbers and try to come to a line in the sand where we can at least launch our arguments from. We can quibble about his character, his post-goal celebrations, whether he was liked in the locker room, and so on. However, at the least, I would like a starting point that’s rooted in data.

I intend to look at a wide variety of stats. I’ll be relying heavily on Corsica.hockey, hockey-reference.com, stats.hockeyanalysis.com, and even nhl.com itself. I’m writing this opening before I even start looking at the numbers, so I have no idea what I’ll find. My intention is to be as thorough and comprehensive as possible to answer the question: Just Who Was Nail Yakupov in Edmonton?

Who Was Nail Yakupov… Pre-Draft?

The 2012 draft was an odd one. Only two of the top 10 picks were forwards. Four years on, it is so far looking like one of the weaker draft classes in the recent past.

Yakupov was the consensus #1 overall pick in the 2012 Entry Draft. Bob McKenzie’s list is the “go-to” when determining consensus. He wrote in June of 2012.

“But Yakupov has been the more or less undisputed top prospect this year from wire to wire, ranked No. 1 in TSN’s pre-season (mid-September), mid-season, (late January), draft lottery (early April) and final (late May) rankings.”

He goes on to say that 8 of the 10 scouts he asked had Yakupov as #1 (the other two picked Ryan Murray and Alex Galchenyuk). He also wrote “the gap between Yakupov and the rest of the field — it was generally considered in the first half of the season to be fairly wide — has closed significantly since Yakupov first suffered a knee injury at the World Junior Championship and later sustained a mild shoulder separation.”

So while Yakupov had a poor second half of the season following injury, he still scored 1.64 points/game over the season. That’s behind Taylor Hall’s 1.86 points/game but ahead of both Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (1.54 points/game) and Jordan Eberle (1.07 points/game). What’s more, in Yakupov’s uninjured draft-1 season, his 1.55 points/game is well ahead of all three of those other Oiler draft picks in their equivalent season.

The one negative might be that Nail was a old for his draft year. An early October birthday, had he been born a month earlier, he would have been drafted in the same year as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

Who Was Nail Yakupov… in the KHL?

Yakupov’s rookie year coincided with the most recent lockout, resulting in a shortened season. Nail played 22 games in the KHL during the lockout, so let’s start there. (All stats are from the KHL official website.)

Nail had pretty decent scoring stats during his half-season in the KHL. Eighteen points in 22 games would have put him on pace to lead the team had he kept it up for a full season. It wasn’t due to shooting percentage either, as his 12% was good but not earth-shattering. He was averaging 3.4 shots per game, on pace to be second on the team over a full season. This all despite playing less than 15 minutes a game (3^rd line minutes). He did get some powerplay time as 3 of his 9 goals came with the man advantage.

Full disclosure, I didn’t watch any of Yakupov’s KHL games, but by the numbers he appeared to be able to put up points in a half-season there.

Summary of Yakupov Before His Rookie Season

Nail Yakupov had a track record of point production through his Junior career. He was the consensus #1 pick. You can make an argument that the Oilers needed to draft a defenceman (and 8 of the top 10 picks were defencemen… including Griffin Reinhart) but there is a strong case for Nail Yakupov being the Best Pick Available at #1 overall in what appears to have been a fairly weak draft class.

The one potential negative, that he slowed down in the second half of his draft year, is easily explained by injury. Those injuries didn’t seem to impact him greatly during his brief stint in the KHL, where he produced a solid clip for a 19 year old rookie despite getting 3rd line ice-time.

Whatever else we can say about Nail Yakupov, his career before donning an Oiler uniform was certainly heading in a positive direction.

In Part 2, up later today, we’ll look at Yakupov’s rookie season under Ralph Krueger.