Good point.
I'll admit that using the term "skipped" regarding the combine might not have been the best choice of words. Still, no combine and rumors (even though they're just rumors) that even hint that he may be trying to fall to preferred team(s) makes him too risky for us, IMO.
I'm going off of what Dan Marr (Director of NHL Central Scouting) said when asked about Russians coming to the Combine. Maybe he was wrong or he's being misunderstood, or politics. I just don't know. Either way, if there's one team in the entire league that he might not want to play for, it's us. And he has all that time under the KHL contract to find a way off our team if he did choose to. We've been burned before (Wheeler, Turris, etc.) I would hope and expect that the teams actually have a better grasp of what's real and what's overblown BS being reported than I do though.
Emptying the 2023 NHL Combine Notebook.
"The other top story was the absence of Russian players at the Combine including top prospect
Matvei Michkov. Central Scouting Director Dan Marr was asked about this on Friday. He admitted that the nine Russian players would be welcomed at the Combine if they could get there. Marr went on to talk about the current geopolitical climate. “We can’t control the geopolitical situation over there. We talked to all the agents for the players and it’s difficult to travel. It’s difficult to get visas to enter the U.S. and we just left it open. There were top-nine Russian players."