Holy shit what a tire fire of a game by Gusev. That guy was straight space junk. Never liked that player one bit. I remember people here penciling him in as a top line winger. Good grief.
I thought he played good enough and started to produce later on that year, I can't remember if it was right after Hynes was fired that it started getting better, if it was a bit after Hynes was fired or if he started right before Hynes was fired. It couldn't have been too long before that, because he was looking like a complete and utter bust at one point in November.
He sucked terribly the next year though, and he only seemed to score and pile up points mostly on junk time goals. Like when we were down by two goals and pulled the goalie and scored a goal to bring us to within one.
After the mutual termination of his contract he immediately signed with Florida, but it wasn't long before he became he was perma-healthy scratched for the rest of the year. I distinctly remember him appearing in 0 playoff games for them, and all indications were that it wasn't because he was hurt. He very quickly fell out of favor there.
He was highly skilled. He simply could not keep up with the pace of the game. That was his biggest issue by far.
I don't know about highly skilled, but skilled. Maybe highly skilled by KHL standards.
His NHL stint was much like Tedenby. An offensive player that doesn't produce (enough) offense.
Though Gusev wasn't nearly as bad as Tedenby at producing offense. He did fine at it in his first season in the NHL. Almost all of Tedenby's NHL total points came I think in his 30 games or something?
