| Radel Zamaltdinov | Irbis Kazan | MHL | L | C | 5’9″ | 159 | Kazan, RUS | 2005 | 2022-2023: C |
Zamaltdinov is an undersized left shot center who is currently playing in his second MHL season with his home town Irbis Kazan. Last year he scored 16 goals in 51 games finishing with 29 total points. He just returned on December 18th and has 1 assist through 2 games.
Zamaltdinov plays an in your face style that leads to confrontations and often times retaliations from his opponents. During the 21/22 season he had 14 penalty minutes, but drew 33 penalty minutes. He has a shooter’s mentality and has historically shown the awareness to get lost in the opposing team’s defensive zone coverage and then quickly sprint to the soft area with his stick prepared to fire a one-timer or a smooth catch and release snapshot. During the 21/22 season Zamaltdinov attempted 210 shots, with 166 of them came from within the expanded house and 16 of his goals coming from h=net front battles below the hash marks directly in front of the opposing goaltender (4 came on the power play).
At this point we feel Zamaltdinov is a long shot to be drafted. Although we like his spunk, his size and limited action during the 22/23 season have hurt him. We also do not view him as a burner or exceptional quick laterally so standing at 5’9″ and being a net front scorer is probably not going to happen in the North American professional game.