Friday, April 9, 2010

Kabanov sent home... again


A week ago this would have made a great April Fool's joke.

The Moncton Wildcats sent Kirill Kabanov home during a playoff run so he could "focus on the world under-18 championship." That official explanation of course, is widely believed to have been the wink-wink, nudge-nudge version of "the team was better off without him so we got rid of the headache."

Now the Russian team has sent him home as well. Kabanov has gone from highly touted to highly troubled. He dropped to No. 31 from No. 15 on Central Scouting's North American skater rankings for the 2010 NHL draft, and could freefall with yet another question being raised about his ability to fit into a team.

No word yet on what's next for Kabanov. At this point you have to wonder if he could even stick with a house league team. One time my weekly pickup game pooled money together to pay a guy not to play the rest of the year because we got so sick of him. That's what this situation reminds me of, of course there's much more talent and an NHL future on the line.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

By the way, if you haven`t yet, check out Dean and Guy`s interview with Sam Cosentino from this week`s show. Towards the end they touch on some of this stuff with Kabanov, and how he`s not likely to be back with the Cats. Seems almost prophetic now:

http://www.thepipelineshow.com/clips/season_5/Sam_Cosentino_Apr6.mp3

Ribs said...

Wow.