The "free wallet". Brian Burke popularized the phrase in the hockey world in the midst of his tenure with the Maple Leafs, to signify young, unrestricted free agent prospects added to the team without having to give up any form of compensation. The premise was sensible, even if most of his wallets turned out to have been empty. After all, why wouldn't you want to stock your cupboards up with as many potential NHLers as possible?
The hockey world stretches across many leagues in many countries, and in those leagues, you'll find a ton of players that are free to be picked off by NHL teams. Most aren't worth the aggravation, but every so often, somebody sticks out and catches the eye of the rest of the world.
But what if I told you that the best of these thousands of players isn't getting even the slightest bit of attention and that he's hidden in plain sight? Enter Anatoly Golyshev.
Golyshev is a 21-year-old winger born in Perm, Russia. If his name sounds familiar to you, that's because he's played in Toronto before as a member of Russia's 2015 World Junior Team, on a roster that included Toronto Marlies defenceman and Leafs prospect Rinat Valiev. He wasn't particularly notable, however; head coach Valeri Bragin was far from a fan of his, limiting his minutes and declaring that he didn't have much of a chance of becoming a regular professional player.
It was a weird statement, given that he was already well on his way. He was 11th in MHL (Russia's top junior league) scoring as a 17-turned-18-year-old in 2012/13 and was in the midst of his second KHL season. While he wasn't lighting up the league, he was doing more than most teenagers. Despite playing 13 minutes night, he managed 19 points in 44 games; good for the eighth-best scoring rate by a 19-year-old in the KHL. Most of the players above him have turned out pretty good; Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nail Yakupov (lockout year), Artemi Panarin, and Vladamir Tarasenko were the lines he was chasing. It was only a matter of time before Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, who's system he had been in for several years, would finally give him a chance at being a star.
This year, they increased his minutes and threw him into offensive situations. In an even bolder move, they also named him alternate captain. Let me tell you, did all of it ever pay off.
