"I hope the champion will be anyone but Zenit"
More than a year ago, in November 2023, we talked to Ilya Mikheev, who played on the Vancouver Canucks' top scoring line back then. Now moved to Chicago, the forward talked about the changes in his hockey destiny, the difference between Canada and the U.S., assessed his career prospects and talked about Russian soccer.
The exchange did not allow me to go to my grandmother's dacha
- I talked to your teammate Nikita Zadorov recently and asked him if he was happy with what he had achieved by his 30th birthday. He said he wasn't, because he hadn't even gotten close to the Stanley Cup. What would you say to a similar question?
- First of all, that we play in the best league in the world, and a lot of hockey players would like to be in our place. So I guess we've achieved something. But, of course, I want to develop and achieve more. Ideally, you come to the NHL and win the Stanley Cup when you're 18-20 years old, and then you can play without this burden. But it happens very rarely. People sometimes take decades to get to that point, and sometimes the most outstanding of them never reach it.
- Back to the Stanley Cup. You have less of a chance for it now than you did before. The club is a deep underdog. Weren't you upset when you found out where you had to go?
- This is the first trade for me in my life: after Toronto, I signed with Vancouver as a free agent. But I realized that it's not me who decides, but the clubs. Each team is at different stages of development. Somewhere there's a ready-made contender, somewhere there are younger players. And you have to accept those conditions.
- Your agent Dan Milstein told me a year ago, "Ilyusha is the only ECHA player who returns to Russia in the summer to go to his grandmother's house to dig her vegetable garden. The easiest person in the world." Did you have time last summer with the trade?
- No, and it wasn't just about the exchange - although it was about that too. My sister came to visit me, I hadn't seen her for five years. We spent a month together. And the exchange - while we packed and moved our things, while we got an American work visa, we were stuck in Toronto for a week. And then it's August, and you can't get anywhere in time.
But of course I missed my family, including my grandmother and friends. My grandmother's vegetable garden is not in the village, but at her dacha in the village of Ostashkovo. I grew up on Moskovska, which is the outskirts of Omsk, and the dacha was built not far from there. With a bathhouse! Eh... I hope I will get there next summer. I couldn't come in 2023 because of rehabilitation after knee surgery. I really want to come!
No shock or surprise from the trade
- How did Chicago take the trade? And is it true that before that you lifted the ban on exchanges, which you had in your contract with Vancouver, and the club officially gave the go-ahead for contacts with other teams?
- After the end of last season, I already understood what was going to happen and prepared for it. So there was no shock, no surprise, no cold showers, no upset in it for me at all. I mean, you feel what's going on. And I was more concerned about the organizational aspects of the move. But again, this process is put on the stream - I am not the first, I am not the last.
- Why didn't you see an opportunity for yourself to revive in Vancouver?
- It's hard to put it into words. But you feel where the team is going, how the coach feels about you - whether he trusts you or not. I didn't feel trust in myself. I understand why it happened, and in no way I blame anyone. I play, not the coach or someone else. In any case, it's already in the past, and I don't want to rekindle it.
- You started last season well, efficiently, but since the middle of December you suddenly stopped scoring - you scored only one puck until the end of the season. Was it the operated knee that bothered you?
- No, it was fine. And I can't even say that we played badly, we didn't create chances. Even if we didn`t score points, we tried to help the team with something else. But first we traded Kuzya, then we started shuffling the lines, and then....
When something doesn't work out, you start digging into yourself more, looking for what you're doing wrong, and in the end you just bury yourself even deeper. Because, working in training and in games as before, you need to relax mentally, not to get worked up. This was a good lesson for me. Negative experience is also experience.
Carriers of the spirit of champion "Chicago" - servicemen and masseurs
- "Chicago" is your first American team after "Toronto" and "Vancouver". Is there any difference between the countries?
- Although they are very close, there is a difference - first of all, in terms of life off the ice. And in hockey, it's not much, because the Black Hawks are an Original Six team, and everything around them, including the press and fans, is about the same as in Canada. Although there, hockey is the number one sport there, while in the US there are plenty of alternatives. That's another difference.
- What's the difference off the ice?
- In Canada, people recognize you more. Yes, Toronto has the NBA, but Chicago is American soccer, basketball and baseball. It's a huge city, lots of tourist spots. You can walk around it quietly, not many people know you. In Canada, it was much more difficult. We already got to know Chicago well because we live in the center and we had time to walk around everything. A couple of restaurants we like have popped up too, although we try to eat at home more.
- Donald Trump struck everyone with the statement that Canada should become the 51st state of the United States, promised to drastically reduce taxes there. And if you compare taxes in the Maple Leaf Country with the state of Illinois, where you are playing now - where are they less?
- Illinois. But not everywhere, in New York they are big. And in Vancouver or Toronto you give more than fifty percent. Why hockey players tend to go to Florida - not only because of the climate, but also because there is no state tax and everything is much more favorable.
- There are no other Russians in the Black Hawks. Who do you go to dinner with on the road?
- A little bit with everyone. At the beginning of the season we once went golfing on a weekend. The guys are good, some of them I've played with on other teams - T.J. Brodie, Jason Dickinson, Nick Foligno, Petr Mrazek. And Philipp Kurashev speaks Russian well (he has a Swiss passport - Ed.). In slang, whatever - he understands everything.
- When you came to Chicago, did you feel the traditions of not just an Original Six club, but a team that won the Stanley Cup three times in the last decade?
- When you come into the clubhouse, you immediately see those cups - how that history has evolved, how they've won. A lot of personnel - service men, masseurs - have remained from that time, they've been with the team for 15-20 years. They are the bearers of that spirit.
- In "Chicago" you changed your 65th number to 95th. Because of a bad stretch in "Vancouver"?
- No. They told me that defenseman Andrew Shaw played under No. 65, a two-time Stanley Cup winner, and I couldn't use him. No problem - I chose the 95th, because, first of all, my wife was born that year, and secondly, nine is an inverted six.
- You started in the Black Hawks with nine games without a single point. It was like a continuation of the second part of the season in Vancouver.
- New team, coaching staff, demands. It still took a little bit of time to acclimatize. Sometimes you go out with emotion for the first game, you do well, and then you have a slump. It went a little bit different for me in Chicago, but I knew it would take time to get acclimated. I realized that it's not a big deal.
- In the second half of December you had a strong rise, scored in four consecutive games and scored 6 (5+1) points. What do you attribute this rebound to?
- I think with the fact that the trios started to be more or less left in the same combinations. Because at the beginning of the season, under the previous coach (Luke Richardson - Ed.), they changed them a lot - you play one or two games, and everything was changed again. And then it settled down somewhere, and we caught some kind of wave. The more we play together, the better we understand each other.
- Which expression is closer to the truth: "Everything in Chicago is imbued with the spirit of the winning era of the 2010s, and the new team is starting to be built as a continuation of those traditions" or "Nothing in Chicago reminds of the period of ten years ago, it has a whole new history"?
- It's akin to asking whether the glass is half full or half empty. I think it's starting something completely new. Because the management, the coaching staff, the players - everything is different, except for Teräväinen. But let's assume that new is the well-forgotten old.
- When in the second half of the season there are no objective chances to make the playoffs, the team doesn't start practicing after a while?
- Absolutely not. And you want to show some results, and the fans come, and you play first of all for them. So there is no suitcase mood.
I hope the champion will not be Zenit!
- And now - about your favorite soccer.
- Long time ago, ha-ha!
- What are your impressions of this season in the RPL?
- Since training camps are underway, I will say right away that I do not like the "fall-spring" format in Russia at all. After all, it turns out that the season is split into two, which have little to do with each other.
- What do you think of the new format of the Champions League?
- I like it, because never before has there been such intrigue until the last round, when a number of top clubs could fail to qualify from the group!
- And in the RPL, who will you bet on - who will be the champion? Zenit again?
- Hopefully, anyone but Zenit! It's not that I'm against this team, it's just that after so many years of its championship I want something new. But if they win again, it means they are stronger, and that should be respected too.
Still, I hope Krasnodar gained experience during last year's fight for gold, and it will help them. That's how it often works in the NHL - Tampa lost in the final to Chicago, then reached the seventh game of the semifinals two more times, won the regular season with a record 62 wins - and only then took the Cup. Everything comes gradually, accumulates. "Zenit, who have won five years in a row, are brash at crucial moments, while Krasnodar are soft. I hope the situation has changed now. But for the decisive breakthrough they need guys with character, more cheeky.
Let's look at Spartak, who, it seems to me, didn't need this winter break at all. A little more and they would have caught up with the leaders. I don't think CSKA and Dynamo will climb very high this season. The Army men can't seem to afford strong players, and Dynamo plays too much Brazilian soccer - open, risky. Although last year they were leaders until the last round - and so many of their fans went to Krasnodar then...
- Your contract with Chicago ends in a year and a half. You haven't received an offer to extend it yet? Have you thought about what's next?
- Not yet. Yes, it seems that a year and a half is not such a long time, but everything changes here in a month, and sometimes even in a week.
- Are you going to play in the NHL until the end or do you admit that in the summer of 2026 you will return to the KHL?
- Of course, I want to play as long as possible in the best hockey league in the world, with all due respect to the KHL. I will try and work, do everything for this. But I don't say anything and I don't make any predictions. We'll live and see.
- Do you want to finish your career in your native Avangard?
- Honestly, I'm not making any long-term plans. But in general, of course, I would like to. Just not so that I can torture my partners and fans with my presence on the ice, ha-ha.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
