Ottawa Charge expects second Russian player drafted in PWHL to be a 'superstar'
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Only one Russian ever had been chosen in the PWHL draft before the Ottawa Charge selected two on Tuesday night.
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Naturally, Mike Hirshfeld expects much better luck with his picks — especially forward Anna Shokhina — than the Boston Fleet had with Ilona Markova last year.
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'We had her as probably the fourth-most talented player in this draft,' the Charge GM said of the team's second-round pick during a recap of the evening's events at Ottawa's new Hard Rock Casino & Resort as Tuesday night turned into Wednesday morning. 'That's how highly we thought of her, so to get her at 13 was really exciting for us.
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'We think she's going to be a superstar in this league and we're excited to get here and have her show her skills.'
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Initially, Boston might have had similar aspirations for Markova, a skilled, then-22-year-old forward the team selected in the seventh round in 2024. But after attending training camp, she was released and returned to play in her homeland.
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'Sometimes you swing (and miss) and we swung a couple times last year,' Fleet GM Danielle Marmer said. 'I think of Markova, for example, as one of those.'
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Largely because of the homework they've done on the 28-year-old, who had 30 goals and 73 points in 42 games with Dynamo-Neva St. Petersburg 'A' last season.
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Also, the recommendation of Mel Davidson — the former head coach and GM of Canada's national team — who gave a thumbs up to both Shokhina and her former Dynamo linemate Fanuza Kadirova, the Charge's sixth and last pick on Tuesday.
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'We put a lot of work in on both of them,' Hirshfeld said. 'Over the last month, we have talked to both of the players themselves. We have scouted some film that we found of them. We've talked to coaches and people who played in that league.
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'We hired Mel as a consultant and she started working with us early in the new year. Mel has actually coached them as part of the IIHF international growth program, so she knows both the players really well.
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'Fanuza is a very talented player, lots of skill, a goal scorer. We think she's going to have to deal with the physicality in this league and that's going to be a learning curve for her. But we think the upside, where we picked her in the sixth round, is incredibly high.'
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Hirshfeld said the Charge's lawyers envision no problems obtaining work visas for the two Russians.
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'For us, it was definitely worth a shot bringing them both together,' he said. 'They're definitely not fluent, but they are learning English. But we're comfortable (with their overseas transition) because of the skill level and the talent level. Our organization has focused on international players for a long time, so we think they'll fit in really well in our culture.
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