Why was Nail Yakupov a bust?

[BWJM]

I think he would've benefited greatly from maturing and coming to the league later like Panarin.

Then again he went 1st overall so that was never going to happen.

 

[PAZ]

As everyone mentioned, he had all the tools but no toolbox.

But there's more than that, I genuinely think he did work his butt off (at least later in his career) and the talent was obviously there. But a mixture between poor coaching early in his career, not being very coachable/poor English, and most importantly he was unable to get past the mental hurdle and gain his confidence back.

He would've benefited greatly from an extra year or two developing and honestly, not being drafted 1st overall.

 

[thrillhous]

He would've gone like 5th or 6th in the draft if he was a year younger, and would've been hard pressed to crack the top ten if he was a year older. It was a tremendously shit draft. It was known at the time that it was going to be a shit draft, but he and Galchenyuk(who got injured during his draft year) were the only guys that appeared to have star potential at all. Really only Forsberg and arguably Reilly can be called stars from that draft. Cody Ceci has played the second most games FFS. Nobody would remember him so poorly if he was a 6th overall pick. Those go sideways pretty regularly. He just had the misfortune of being the most exciting player in a dreadful year.

In 2011 and in 2012 everyone talked about how much better it was than the 2011 draft. It turned out to be shitty in retrospect, not at the time.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Bad IQ, got bad coaching in Edmonton which didn't help either

 

[These Are The Days]

Something Something chased by bees

 

[Roof Daddy]

Pretty much everything has been covered BUT I would add that he was in a bad situation with the supporting cast he had. He was an outsider among the young guns like Hall, Ebs, Nuge and Schultz. They did this thing on the Oilers website called something like “how well do you know your teammate”. Naturally all of the young guns new all kinds of details about each other, but when they asked about Yak, it wasn’t just that they didn’t know anything about him, but they gave snarky, sarcastic answers.

I think he was living on an island in that dressing room. It was a toxic environment. Low confidence, Dallas Eakins as a coach, lack of leadership. The worst possible place for him to land. I kinda feel bad for him.

 

[Maple Leaf]

He

Pretty much everything has been covered BUT I would add that he was in a bad situation with the supporting cast he had. He was an outsider among the young guns like Hall, Ebs, Nuge and Schultz. They did this thing on the Oilers website called something like “how well do you know your teammate”. Naturally all of the young guns new all kinds of details about each other, but when they asked about Yak, it wasn’t just that they didn’t know anything about him, but they gave snarky, sarcastic answers.

I think he was living on an island in that dressing room. It was a toxic environment. Low confidence, Dallas Eakins as a coach, lack of leadership. The worst possible place for him to land. I kinda feel bad for him.

Oilers wow

 

[Erik Alfredsson]

The Oilers had zero clue how to properly develop prospects back then, and he didn't have a very coachable personality.

So a terrible mix of a team that didn't really know how to properly build up young players into complete NHL players, and a guy who would've struggled rounding out his game in the first place due to being a hard guy to coach.

 

[Filthy Dangles]

I don't think Oilers org or being 'rushed' had anything to do with it. I thought it was purely a translation issue the way he played.

he was either gonna be high end star or bust hard. he would do crazy things @ Sarnia like go end to end after cutting back in the neutral zone and then turning back up the ice after shaking a backchecker among other things.

you better be generationally special if that's gonna work in the NHL, he wasn't quite that. and he just couldn't adapt in the NHL, it's hard when you have that gif and suddenly it's really restricted agaist the best in the world. Plus the poor hockey sense and maybe a language/culture barrier he really just flopped as time went on in the NHL.

seemed like a good kid, i don't think he was lazy or unwilling, he just couldnt.

 

[the paisanos guy]

The oilers scouts agree with you. They were overruled by ownership

Yeah but let's be honest, no one else they would have reasonably picked at 1 would have been much better. That draft sucked butt

 

[Mr Positive]

He came into the league with a great skillset but did not put the right kind of work in. He did training the way he wanted and even didn't even follow along in practices or listen to coaches. I don't care who you are. You won't go far with that. Even McDavid makes effort to gel with the whole team and staff.

He was a great human being in Edmonton btw. He had a fun personality and did things like take homeless people to dinner. It's a bit of tragedy it didn't work out. A pure sniper winger with McDavid and Draisaitl? He couldn't have inherited a better opportunity

 

[njdevils1982]

The Oilers had zero clue how to properly develop prospects back then, and he didn't have a very coachable personality.

So a terrible mix of a team that didn't really know how to properly build up young players into complete NHL players, and a guy who would've struggled rounding out his game in the first place due to being a hard guy to coach.

so, a mentally weak mind.

 

[belair]

One dimensional scoring winger who opposing D didn't take long to figure out. He never seemed overly willing to add elements to his game to extend his NHL career.

People say the Oilers ruined him, but the Blues and Avs didn't seem to rub off on him either.

 

[WhataKnight]

There’s an inherent risk drafting these small crash and bang skilled forwards. Another older case was Gilbert Brule. When I saw Yakupov in Sarnia, I could tell this was risky but no one was talking about it. So I just followed the flow like everyone else. Probably many believed the same thing but no one spoke up.

I struggled to recall a comparison to Yakupov. He’s actually a guy I enjoyed watching.

All you had to say was “Gilbert Brule.”

I never considered the similarities, but they’re there. Good eye!

 

[Juniorhockeyguru]

One interview I'll always remember in hid first year, reporter asked Nail what he has to do to get better, and Nail said "nothing".

 

[SlafySZN]

Here’s an interesting interview he did last year.

 

[RandV]

More like: Why was he hyped so much to begin with?

What was he great at? Maybe skating fast?

He didn't have the hockey IQ to be an NHL star when his tools weren't all that special.

To be fair it was a pretty poor draft class but someone always has to go 1st overall and that creates its own kind of hype. Can be hard comparing different years but at the time of the draft he's probably comparable to say Filip Zadina, but there's a huge difference in perception between a 1st overall and a 6th overall busting even though draft class aside they could be equivalent players.

 

[lawrence]

as a canuck fan watching the rival prospect at the time....

so for one he wasn't big, small... not that small players can't thrive in the NHL. He lacked foot speed, for a guy who is small, and lacked foot speed. so he lacked foot speed and size. He was a perimeter player and was literally scared to get into the dirty areas. now being perimeter player doens't mean hes bad too. The Sedins were also perimeter players, but at the same time, when it matters most, they were fearless and not afraid to get into the "dirty" areas. Yakupov avoided the dirty areas like a plague and that caught onto him. I knew he wasn't going to turn into much very early on.

 

[Nogatco Rd]

Here’s an interesting interview he did last year.

Any highlights? Video is 85 mins long

E: around 22:00 he addresses Brian Burke’s comments about his pre-draft interview if anyone’s interested to hear his side

 

[Dust]

as a canuck fan watching the rival prospect at the time....

so for one he wasn't big, small... not that small players can't thrive in the NHL. He lacked foot speed, for a guy who is small, and lacked foot speed. so he lacked foot speed and size. He was a perimeter player and was literally scared to get into the dirty areas. now being perimeter player doens't mean hes bad too. The Sedins were also perimeter players, but at the same time, when it matters most, they were fearless and not afraid to get into the "dirty" areas. Yakupov avoided the dirty areas like a plague and that caught onto him. I knew he wasn't going to turn into much very early on.

His foot speed was fine and he wasn't scared to go to the dirty area's. His problem is he had no hockey IQ, he didn't know where to be positionally or how to find his teammates.

I also think it was just a really bad draft year. Edmonton could have taken any of the top 4 guys picked and they would all be considered busts. Some good defensemen ended up getting picked, but it was a horrible year for forwards.

 

[ItWasJustified]

Why was Nail Yakupov a bust?​

You could've just read any of the already existing threads which deal with the same subject.

The Fall of Nail Yakupov

As a long time member of this forum, I remember the days of #failfornail and the hype he generated in an otherwise abysmal draft. I was a believer in Yak, as I projected him to be a poor man's Bure with his shot and his speed. Now, we all know how his NHL career turned out and this topic has...

forums.hfboards.com

Why is Yakupov a bust?

People kept thinking he'd finally have a break out year after he left Edmonton, but his abilities have actually declined even more. What went wrong?

forums.hfboards.com

Yakupov was on pace for 53 pts as a rookie. So what happened?

People here say Yakupov is the worst bust in a long time. But his rookie numbers are pretty good at 31 points in 48 games, or a 53 point pace. This is a better PPG than Hughes, Kakko, Hischier, Laf, etc. So why did he bust if he had the rookie numbers that he did?

forums.hfboards.com

 

[Three On Zero]

His foot speed was fine and he wasn't scared to go to the dirty area's. His problem is he had no hockey IQ, he didn't know where to be positionally or how to find his teammates.

I also think it was just a really bad draft year. Edmonton could have taken any of the top 4 guys picked and they would all be considered busts. Some good defensemen ended up getting picked, but it was a horrible year for forwards.

Yakupov seemed like the kind of player that wasn’t “coachable”, decent speed, decent hands, decent physicality. But he just never improved or put it together. He kept his junior play style in a league of men. I don’t solely think he had a lack of hockey IQ to play, I also think he was reluctant to evolve his game to the NHL.

 

[The Panther]

The main problem with Yakupov's NHL career was that he simply wasn't an exceptional hockey player. I really don't know what the Oilers (in that awful Steve Tambellini period) were thinking. Sure, he was likely to go in the first round to somebody, but as a 1st overall choice, he was an odd one. I remember watching him play -- it was, like, his third NHL game or something -- and my opinion after one game was, "This guy sucks". And nothing I saw over the next few seasons altered my opinion. (And he actually had a statistically decent rookie year, but I thought he was a whole lot of nothing.) Yakupov was a good skater, but so what? So are 90% of NHL-ers. He had terrible hands and could not process hockey at NHL speed.

A secondary issue with Yakupov -- as Brian Burke crowed (as usual) in pointing out -- is that he had a bit of weird attitude and psychological make-up. This (understandably) scared away some other NHL franchises from drafting him. Giving interviews where he said there was "nothing" he needed to improve didn't exactly endear him to fans / media / teammates.

Finally, a third, if lesser, factor in Yakupov's poor NHL transition was the Oilers firing coach Ralph Krueger after Yakupov's short rookie season. Not that Yakupov did anything amazing as a rookie, but he scored enough and had a big enough role that his confidence wasn't shot yet. But just four months into his NHL career the Oilers hired a new GM (MacT) who fired the coach (by Skype) and hired... Dallas Eakins. With very young players who are struggling, sometimes changes coaches in mid-stream can be a disaster, and it was with Yakupov.

Of my three points, though, that third one is relatively unimportant. Yakupov could have been drafed by any NHL franchise and he would have struggled to succeed.

 

[The Panther]

Here’s an interesting interview he did last year.

Thanks for linking that interview. I'm watching it now and it's very interesting.

Boy, one thing to say about Yakupov -- and I say this based on this interview -- is that his psychology clearly was very fragile. I mean, he says this himself numerous times in the interview. He says things like (in his rookie year) he sometimes wanted to be alone, in the dark, and not talk to anyone.

The way he describes the team-interviews before the NHL draft and the draft itself, you'd think he was talking about D-Day or something. He talks about how nervous and anxious he constantly was. It really becomes clear from these kind of interviews with players that some young athletes are just genetically programmed to deal with pressure / celebrity / expectations, and some young athletes are NOT. Yakupov, very obviously, the latter type. (Per his odd personality, he also seems weirdly fixated on several surface-level type of things in the NHL, like the lifestyle, free cars, and 5-star-type travel.)

He also says in the interview that he didn't speak English well at draft-time or his rookie year, and this limited him as well. For example, he says that former 1st-overall picks Nugent-Hopkins and Taylor Hall didn't offer him any advice or try to help him, because basically they couldn't communicate with him. (Conversely, he also says that playing NHL hockey in Canada is heavenly, as everything is so first-class all the way.) Weirdest of all (to me), he says that during his rookie year, when Nikolai Khabibulin was his teammate, he didn't speak to Khabibulin until there were 10 games left in the season (!). They were country-men, together in Edmonton, and he didn't speak to Khabibulin.

Interesting fellow.

 

[Albatros]

Weirdest of all (to me), he says that during his rookie year, when Nikolai Khabibulin was his teammate, he didn't speak to Khabibulin until there were 10 games left in the season (!). They were country-men, together in Edmonton, and he didn't speak to Khabibulin.

Might be explained by that being a lockout year and Khabibulin struggling with injuries once the season did commence. For a rookie to disturb a veteran goalie in rehab might not be that obvious.