I think Simashev will likely stay in Russia a couple more years still before even considering crossing the pond.
And the reason I say that is because I think that russian players tend to want to avoid the AHL.
In general I think that those same players would rather develop at home, with their families and in a culture they're comfortable as opposed to coming over immediately and having to play in the American League, with all of its unglamorous bus travel, sometimes horrible hotel rooms, whilst also making less money than they could in the KHL.
The fact that those russian players have to come over with much less family/entourage that they'd have in Russia also plays a part, and homesickness is much more a factor for those players considering that they sometimes struggle to speak english right off the bat when they come to NA, and can feel quite suffocated/isolated amidst all that north-american culture/food that might not be comfortable for them.
Those guys put up with it for the money and the opportunity to play in the NHL, the greatest league in the World. But doing so for the AHL is much, much harder to justify for good young players considering they can just stay in Russia in the couple of years after the Draft and not have to deal with all of that.
If this line of reasoning holds true for him, I think Simashev will likely go the way of other NHL russian defensemen before him like Zadorov, Gavrikov, Emelin, and company, that came in their twenties to the NHL, later than their skillsets would have warranted, but never looked back afterwards.
