I think I read somewhere that from the 3rd round forwards in the draft the likelihood of you getting an NHL player who will play more than 100 career games is like 2% or something ridiculous. If that is the case and you know that literally only 1 out of your 50 picks will be an NHLer, why not swing for the fences and hope that you can hit on a hidden talent. Russian players are a crapshoot, yes, but the lower leagues are still not that widely scouted and I believe that there are gems available. Even in this draft, I think we have legitimate NHL talent in Akhtyamov and Ovchnnikov. Neither guys are sexy picks but I think long term if they develop properly, they have legitimate shots. One place where we've been super successful is Sweden. The AJ and Engvall picks have been brilliant. Never hurts to throw darts at guys who might be underachieving in leagues due to a myriad of reasons.
I'd also add, you can't really talk much about our lack of success producing players drafted out of Russia because for so long we just didn't do it.
Between Kulemin in 2006 and Dzierkals in 2015 we selected zero players out of Russia. That's 8 straight drafts.
Since then we've taken
2016 - Korshkov (2nd Rd), Chebykin (7th)
2017 - Kara (4th)
2018 - Kizimov (7th)
2019 - None
2020 - Amirov (1st), Akhtyamov (4th), Ovchinnikov (5th)
Korshkov was a questionable pick from the get go, injuries set him back and now he looks like a potential depth player
Kara looked good in D1 and D2, but development seems to have stalled a bit (although I'm no expert on him).
Chebykin and Kizimov were both 7th rounders so hard to be too critical of them looking like nothing.
This year will be the test, obviously a 1st rounder has expectations and to me 4th/5th round picks should show promise even if it fizzles out (like Kara showed in D1 and D2).