After two very strong seasons with Dynamo Moscow in the KHL, winger Dmitrij Jaskin decided to give the NHL another shot in 2021-22 as he inked a one-year deal with Arizona worth $3.2M, a surprisingly high sum given his performance in his first NHL stint. Unfortunately, things didn’t go too well, and his agent Gleb Chistyakov told Sport-Express in Russia that four KHL teams are showing interest in bringing the pending unrestricted free agent back to Russia.
The 29-year-old got off to a slow start this season with the Coyotes, notching just a single assist in 12 games despite averaging nearly 15 minutes a night. That’s a far cry from being better than a point-per-game player as he was in his two seasons overseas when he finished second and fourth in league scoring. Unfortunately for him and Arizona, Jaskin then suffered a season-ending injury in a knee-on-knee collision with Nashville’s Mark Borowiecki in a game in mid-November.
As a result of his early struggles, the injury and his limited production in his first NHL stint between St. Louis and Washington, it’s hard to envision Jaskin receiving NHL offers that are anywhere close to what he received from the Coyotes this season. As a result, a return to the KHL where he’d command a top salary makes a lot of sense for him even though it will probably close the door on his NHL career in the process.
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