Yegor Korhskov suffers potentially lengthy injury in KHL

Yegor Korshkov, prospect for the Maple Leafs, has had a rough go of his development path.

After not being drafted in his original draft year, he was selected by Toronto in the 2nd round of the 2016 NHL draft as an over-ager.

He then transitioned to the KHL where he had some good production but was unfortunate enough to suffer a broken leg that kept him out of a significant chunk of his draft+2 season, the 2016-17 KHL season. That year is a critical step in the development of a prospect. These are the years where it’s critical that a prospect shows continual improvement year-over-year on the way towards proving themselves at the NHL level.

A smooth 21-year-old season (26 points in 52 games) built hope back up for Korhskov and his fans, but now, he has suffered yet another critical injury in this, his 22-year-old season:

As reported by the Russian Prospects Twitter page, and confirmed by Leafs prospects guru @51Leafs. Credit goes to both for the source material.

These are still the very early days of the KHL season, as Korshkov has only dressed with Locomotiv Yaroslavl for their first 2 games. If he were to be out 12 weeks from his last played game, he would miss 30 games of just a 62 game season.

It would be unfair and somewhat reckless to say that this is the time to abandon all hope of Korshkov making the NHL, but there’s no denying this is a set back. Any time you’re missing games in developmental years is bad for development and affects career trajectory as a result. Whether that affects his true career path remains to be seen, but if you were hoping to one day see Korshkov skate for the Maple Leafs, this is an unfortunate setback.