This year’s NHL Draft was fun. Lots of great stories, from Gavin McKenna going to the Leafs, Caleb Malhotra getting drafted by his old man’s Vancouver Canucks, and Ottawa selecting Jaxon Cover with the 32nd pick, a player who hails from the Cayman Islands and only started playing ice hockey five years after starting in inline puck.
Then there’s Alexander Karmanov out of Moldova, who became the tallest player ever selected in the NHL Draft at a towering 7’1″.
That’s a full three inches taller than the great Zdeno Chara, so, in other words, he’s downright a giant.
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Karmanov was selected by the San Jose Sharks in the seventh round after playing last season in the OHL’s North Bay Battalion. In 2027, he’s committed to playing for one of the most up-and-coming programs in college hockey at Penn State
But, there are some questions about his NHL readiness, and we got our first taste of what that could look like at the San Jose Sharks development camp.
The big knock on Karmanov — as is the case for pretty much any big fella — is his skating. Sure, I get that’s a big part of being a hockey player, but also if you’re drafting a guy as tall as Shaq, you’re not expecting Connor McDavid-like rocket boosters on the back of his skates.
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And while some clips of Karmanov’s skating got clowned on social media, you’ve got to see what he did in the Sharks’ prospect game, because while his skating may not be fast and it’s certainly not pretty, it sure seems effective.
He’s easy to spot, and I certainly didn’t expect to see him start chugging 200 feet up the ice, but when he did, there was no stopping him.
How does an average-sized NHLer go at him?
He’s got a mile-long reach, and if he shields the puck with his body, you may as well skate to the bench for a line change because you’re not getting the puck.
If he leans into his strengths like that, I think he could actually work out in the NHL.
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I know it’s a prospects game and something like that wouldn’t likely work against NHL regulars, but remember, he’s still a couple of years away from being an NHLer himself.
I think Karmanov is going to continue to be a problem for every team he plays against in the OHL, and then at Penn State in ’27.
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