We may have seen the last of Evgeny Dadonov in a Rochester Americans uniformm he wants an NHL guarantee or has said he’ll go back to the KHL and play for Traktor Chelyabinsk. Some translation websites have produced the following comments from Dadonov, based upon this article at SportBox.ru:
“If Florida will give me the guarantee that I will play (in the NHL), then I will remain. If no clear promises are given (by the Panthers), if they do not give (me a) chance to appear, then I am ready to play for Traktor.”
The Panthers do everything they can to get him over to North America last season, he plays a decent but not amazing rookie season in the AHL and now he thinks he can make demands and make the jump? Yea, I don’t think so. It’ll be interesting to see how new Panthers GM Dale Tallon takes care of this situation. I would expect something like this out of Michal Repik but not Dadonov.
In 73 games with the Amerks he scored 17 goals and had 23 assists playing with Chris Taylor and Graham Mink for much of the season. He improved as the season went on but I don’t think he did enough to prove that he has the ability to demand an NHL position.
If he’s already making this comments in the middle of May I’d say adios. Even if they do convince him he’ll be a call up as needed it’ll likely mean pouting in the AHL, something the Amerks don’t need to deal with.
Thanks to our friends LitterBoxCats.com and The Copper and Blue at SBN for posting the story.
He played with Taylor and Mink. Both had down years statistically. Taylor was second on the team in scoring with 61 pts for 0.76/gm. Mink had 37 in 67 for 0.55/gm and Dadanov had 40 in 76 for 0.53/gm. I would say playing with those two you would stumble into 35-40 pts over a season, even though they were having down years. The fact that he stumbled into 40 points tells me that he isn’t an all-star at this level. Fine to want a look in training camp and maybe stay with the team like Duco did this year at the start, but He should expect to be an AHLer for another season or two. The issue is that the KHL thinks they are competative with the NHL and way over pay guys. I also heard that there is a law over there says they can pay guys tax free Salary to draw them over. I believe that is the reason Jagr is over there. They also offered Malkin the equivalent of $12 mill tax free per season to play there. He smartly turned it down. I have a feeling that they really need to pay that much because in order to have the quality of life an NHLer here making 5 mill has you need to make 12 mill over there. Good Luck E. Your absence really won’t be noticed.