Days after being stapled to the bench as SKA’s 13th forward, it appears that the tide has turned for Ivan Demidov with his KHL club. Following a long game of bench-warming in their playoff opener, he was elevated back into the team’s top six, performing well over the next two games, and helping SKA win Game 3 to avoid giving Dynamo Moscow a stranglehold on their series. SKA have announced that they’ve agreed to an extension with Demidov to keep him with Roman Rotenberg’s squad through the 2026-27 season.
The expectation had always been for Demidov to debut in the NHL next season, since he himself stated multiple times on the day of his draft that that was his plan, one that was also expressed by the Canadiens during this season. That will now have to wait for a couple more years.
It is a perplexing decision on Demidov’s part, at least from an outside perspective. Rotenberg’s deployment decisions have placed limits on the top prospect Russia has had since perhaps Kirill Kiprizov, so it is hard to see why the forward would willingly sign a deal when a much more nurturing environment awaits him in Montreal. His would-be NHL coach has shown that he has no fear of letting his young offensive players flourish, so he would have been a lock for top-six minutes in Montreal in 2025-26.
This contract decision will mean two more years of the Canadiens fanbase following the KHL intently. Unless of course this entire article is a complete fabrication, and you should have checked the date before reading it. If you made it this far without doing so, poisson d’Avril!
