At first this "Radulov, ooh, my love!" stuff was cute but now it's gone a little too far.
The leading PPG player in the Sochi games, the leading goalscorer in the tournament and the leading point scorer after the group stage was MICHAEL GRABNER! You tell me, how many of ya'll Russians think that the best offensive forward in the world is MICHAEL GRABNER! A big fat ZERO people think MICHAEL GRABNER is the best forward in the world. Other than a few games under a coach who had no idea how to allocate ice time, you have no reason to believe that Malkin and Ovechkin are actually worse than Radulov AND EVEN IF YOU DID HAVE EVIDENCE, it wouldn't matter because no one can say with any sort of assurance that Malkin and Ovechkin are better than Benn either. No one includes statistics (Benn is leading both in scoring) by the way which you Radulov enthusiasts don't seem to be trying to use many of, like PPG, and ART ROSS TROPHIES.
Also there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that Radulov would be the Art Ross trophy winner either. Take a BEST CASE EXAMPLE, Artemi Panarin, who scored 62 points in 54 KHL games last season and 47 in 54 NHL games so far, clips of 1.148 and .8703 so if we do the math he's scoring .7581 of what he scored in the KHL, translate Radulov's statistics right now in the KHL he has a 1.24 clip to Panarin's standard of NHL stats he would have 50.76 or roughly translated to 51 points. That puts him 23 points off the Art Ross trophy leader, 7 points of JAMIE BENN, and in 7th place behind Joe Pavelski who has a solid 51 points in points scored. AND THAT'S A BEST CASE SCENARIO. As I mentioned earlier, Steve Moses was almost PPG in the KHL with 57 points in 60 games, and has 14 in 17 this year after returning from a stint with the AHL in which he scored 7 WHOLE POINTS in 16 games. You have NO IDEA Radulov will be an Artemi Panarin, he could just as easily be a Steve Moses. When in the NHL in the past Radulov wasn't anywhere NEAR PPG except in his last season a short 9 game stint with the Preds he scored 7 points so with a tiny sample size he had a .777 clip that would put him at 42 points on the season so far which is WAY DOWN THERE on the list of scoring leaders. The KHL isn't only not on par with the NHL, look at Steven Siego from Riga, he scored 14 points in 53 games in Liiga last year or a .264 clip, this year with Riga he has 19 points in 51 games which is a .372 clip, which is more than a 10 percent increase in scoring. Look at Pekka Jormukka, 25 in 59 last year in Liiga, 30 in 52 this year for Jokerit, .424 and .576 in other words more than a 15 percent increase from going to the KHL from Liiga. Many times when a player goes from the NHL to the KHL it looks something like Brandon Kozun, 4 points in 20 NHL games, .200 clip, 42 points in 53 games, .792 clip. Peter Regin is one of many players doing significantly better in the KHL than the AHL. Maybe some here don't watch KHL so they don't know, I doubt Canadians do but I watch most Riga games, and the teams towards the bottom of the table are downright awful, and they don't provide competition not only for top KHL teams but also probably for top MHL teams. All this to say, Radulov has a cute beard, he's got a nasty little grin, and I wouldn't mind seeing him in the NHL some day but I won't let my feelings or whatever get in the way of objectively seeing that Radulov is not better than last year's Art Ross Trophy winner and probably not one of the top 6 forwards in the world.
