Looks like the summer is a time for Russian hockey stars to let their guard down a bit, because yet another player, upon touching down in the Motherland, has let it loose in an interview.
This time, however, Vladimir Putin does not need to bother. Unlike his colleague Artemi Panarin, 23-year-old forward Nikita Scherbak, formerly of the Los Angeles Kings and Montreal Canadiens, didn’t get into the field of political commentary. Instead, he did something much more appreciated in Russia: ripped his former North American employers.
Scherbak sat down with Sport24 to talk about his new contract with the KHL’s Avangard Omsk and was rather candid in his remarks.
Scherbak began by praising Avangard’s Canadian coach Bob Hartley, saying that “He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t have a mad personality, I was able to tell after the first few practices that he is a great coach and person. He would always come and say hello. It’s nice to be at the rink, there is no uncomfortable feeling.”
Not so much with his former bench boss, Montreal’s Michel Therrien, apparently.
“When I spent my first year with Therrien, any mistake would lead to shouting, there was a lot of pressure. It may be good for a young player, on one hand, but many can’t handle this and start to fear mistakes even before practices. A player shouldn’t feel like this. There were times when you’d meet the coach in the corridor and wouldn’t know whether to say hello or to nod your head, or what… I’d say hello anyway, but it was uncomfortable and not a very pleasant feeling. I don’t want to feel like this again.”
Scherbak revealed that he made up his mind to leave the NHL before the end of last season.
“I really didn’t like the situation that was happening in Los Angeles, and there were other difficulties before that, too. I didn’t get off to a good start in Montreal, I wasn’t allowed to play. I trained, I endured, but in the end my nerves got the best of me, and I asked for a trade. They couldn’t get a trade done so they put me on waivers.
When asked to clarify what he meant by “wasn’t allowed to play” in Montreal, Scherbak went further and criticized Los Angeles, too.
“I personally talked to the GM, told him everything”, he said. “Maybe, it wasn’t pleasant for him and me both, but at that time it was the right decision. But then, with the Kings, everything turned out unlike I had planned. They didn’t treat me all that well. I didn’t feel like they were taking care of me, like they were counting on my being in the lineup. I was sent to the farm team, and there, chaos began. It was a difficult time for me…
I don’t know [why I was sent to the farm], nobody told me anything. I came [to Los Angeles], I scored with my first shot, I spent 16 minutes on the line with Toffoli and Kempe. I think, I played well, considering that I had missed three months… But after the third game, they started to sit me down, didn’t give me any chances on the power play. After the Winnipeg game, my time on ice was 2:25, this had never happened before in my career. I’d always spend at least seven or eight minutes on the ice. But here, I came out for three shifts in the first period and then was the only one who sat and watched the game. The next day I went to talk to the coach myself. I am this kind of guy: I like to talk face to face, not through the agent. I asked what I needed to do to play more, because you can’t score in two and a half minutes… He just said I need to get better, that I was in bad shape. I don’t know. The team was in last place, it had injuries. Looks like they made a choice, and it wasn’t me. Ilya Kovalchuk also had a difficult situation. You could feel prejudiced treatment, because even if Kovalchuk, who scored a point a game, isn’t getting on the ice, what can I hope for? I was stricken with this situation.”
After the interviewer pressed him on whether the Kings coach has an anti-Russian bias, Scherbak said: “Yes, Kovalchuk and I had discussed this.” He then went on to describe unfair treatment at the Kings’ AHL farm team, the Ontario Reign.
“I thought I’d be playing in the first line and become the team leader. But in my first game, against the San Jose Barracuda, I had chances, could have scored points, but it didn’t work out and my plus/minus was -3. After that, I was sent down to the third line, with young players, and the coach’s tactic was to shot and run without any thought… I came to practice and saw that a 195-cm-tall defenseman, a tough guy, was put into the second froward line, where he fought. And I was in the third. This just killed me. After that I understood that I don’t want to deal with Los Angeles any longer. They didn’t care about me or my future.:
The interviewer pressed Scherbak again on the issue of anti-Russian bias, now with the Montreal coach and GM, to which the player replied, “I think, [their] actions speak for themselves.”
After that, he got specific on the bias issue, bringing up the supposed ban on Russian language in the locker room back in the time when the Canadiens had numerous Russian players.
“How many francophones were in the team, the Quebec boys, who only speak French? They never even try to speak English in the room. So, they can speak French without problems, but we can’t speak Russian. All Russians were kind and open guys: Markov, Yemelin… Nobody every heard anyone speak bad about them. Why couldn’t we speak Russian? If they want to help me, what’s wrong with that?”
When asked whether this was simply a common enough mistreatment of a rookie, Scherbak didn’t agree.
“I don’t think everyone is treated this way. This was the [GM Marc] Bergevin’s treatment of me. Here is another story: I wanted to rent a place downtown, because I knew I wouldn’t spend the entire season in the farm team. The GM asked me before the season where I planned to live, and I told him. “No, you will live in Laval”, I was told. So, I spent the entire season shuttling between Laval and the [Canadiens] practices. The commute was one hour each way.
With all that, Scherbak still says he wants to live in Canada after he retires. “Russia is too old-school, Canada is much more advanced”, he mused. The interviewer did not press him on this topic, though.
