Top 20 Maple Leaf Prospects 2018: #11 Semyon Der-Arguchintsev

Today we bring you the prospect profile we’ve all been waiting for. Coming in at #11 in our rankings is our tiniest, youngest, adopted son, Semyon Der-Arguchintsev. The Peterborough Pete affectionately referred to as SDA is just as exciting as he is tiny and young, so let’s have some fun with this one.

Everyone who had SDA anywhere beyond tenth is bad and I have blocked them all on twitter dot com. This is slander.

Der-Arguchintsev was born on September 15th, 2000 (the exact cut-off date for the 2018 NHL draft) in Moscow, Russia. He’s listed at 5’10, 159 pounds, according to his eliteprospects page. He will be referred to as “diminutive” quite often when he’s weaving through the neutral zone and making Mitch Marner-esque passes at the NHL level.

The Leafs drafted SDA in the third round (76th overall) of this summer’s draft with the extra pick they received while trading down from 25th to 29th overall. The Leafs used the 29th pick to choose Swedish defenceman Rasmus Sandin, while the St. Louis Blues took German forward Dominik Bokk with the 25th pick. SDA is a right shot centre and is as young, to the day, as he could’ve been to be eligible for the 2018 draft which gives him a lot more room for development in terms of both his game and his physical growth. He’s still 17-years-old. SDA left his family in Russia and moved to Canada at the tender age of 13 in order to give himself the best opportunity to play professional hockey in North America. Luke Fox of Sportsnet.ca wrote a great feature on SDA here.

I was going to use this comparable anyway, but since SDA himself said he wants to play like him: Mitch Marner! He obviously doesn’t project to be quite the player Marner is at this point, but, stylistically, there are definitely similarities. SDA is even more pass-friendly than Marner is, to the point where he mentioned in the Sportsnet piece that he’s going to focus on shooting the puck more this season. Improvement on his 12 goal output from the 2017-18 OHL campaign would definitely be nice to see, but let’s hope he can do that while not sacrificing too much of his special passing abilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, SDA likes to pass a lot more than he likes to shoot.

His numbers may not jump off the page at you, but when you look at the context of him being a pass-first player on a terrible Peterborough Petes team which didn’t score much while also considering the kid turned 17 right before the season started, your hopes should rise a bit. I’m already trying to find somewhere I can consistently stream Petes games because I think he could really break out in his D+1 and also because he’s just a blast to watch.

I got so excited the day they drafted him that I immediately made a bunch of GIFs of him doing fun stuff and posted them all to twitter.

Der-Arguchintsev will be back with the Petes this season and he’ll have a huge role on the team, which he already did last season. As I said earlier, I’m very intrigued by SDA’s potential and skill-set and will be paying close attention to his performance this season as I expect big things. If he can create more shots on an individual level, theoretically building on his goal totals, he might find it even easier to set up his teammates due to drawing more attention himself as a shooting threat.

One of SDA’s biggest hurdles is always going to be his small stature, but he’s got a lot of time to build onto his slender frame and he was, in my view, one of the most skilled players available in the draft this summer.