For someone who had played in four NHL games and has never scored more than 13 goals in a professional season, a certain mystique has evolved around Blues forward Klim Kostin.
One of the team’s two first-round picks in the 2017 draft, being taken with the last pick in the first round, the expectations only grew this season because he was out of reach. The Blues loaned him to a team in the KHL in Russia in September when there was uncertainty about whether the NHL or AHL would play this season and the Blues didn’t want Kostin to lose a season of development.
That was all well and good until the Blues started to get hit by injuries, causing them to dip deep into their forward reserves while Kostin was playing in Europe. Add that to the standard intrigue involving young Russian players — what if he doesn’t come back? — and the Blues’ struggles and the mystery that is Klim Kostin only grew.
Kostin made his season debut for the Blues on Wednesday, a week after completing a successful season in the KHL that was capped by winning the Gagarin Cup as league champions. In a result that was incidental to the grand scheme of life, the Blues beat the Wild 4-0 as Ville Husso posted the team’s first shutout of the season, and learned nothing about who they will face in the playoffs as Vegas and Colorado both won.
Vegas, its regular season over, is two points up on Colorado, which plays the Kings on Thursday night. If Colorado wins, they win the division and the President’s Trophy and will face the Blues in the first round. If Colorado loses, Vegas wins the division and the President’s Trophy and will face the Blues. Either way, the Blues won’t know for sure until almost midnight on Thursday. The loss did assure Minnesota would finish third in the division and that nothing is at stake for either team in the regular-season finale on Thursday.
All that allowed the focus to be on Kostin. Coach Craig Berube put him on a line with fellow 2017 draftee Robert Thomas — Thomas was No. 20, Kostin No. 31 that year — and Mike Hoffman, putting Kostin, 6-foot-3, 212 pounds, in the role of getting the puck and getting it to Hoffman and Thomas.
“Bang,” Berube said, using the word as a verb rather than an interjection. “Get in there on the forecheck and go to the net. … (He’s) a big-body guy and power forward-type hockey, up and down the wing and bang bodies and go to the net. Just simple hockey. He doesn’t need to complicate the game. He just needs to go north-south and manage the puck properly and use his big body.”
Banging was a big part of Kostin’s season in Russia. In 24 playoff games, he was credited with 99 hits, an average of more than four per game. In the regular season, he had 121 hits, but his numbers grew throughout the season as his ice time grew. That’s what he did in his season debut, with a team-high four hits through two periods.
The Blues chose to be patient this season, some would say too patient, with Kostin. They had the option to bring him back whenever they wanted from Russia, but felt he would get more games and have more growth there, and accounts from Russia was that his game and his confidence grew playing there. Kostin came over from Russia in 2017 and played three season with the Blues’ farm team in San Antonio, adjusting not only to the North American game but to life in America. The Blues thought it would take some time, especially since Kostin was 18 when he came to America and had to deal with some culture shock.
As his familiarity grew, so did his numbers. He had six goals his first season, then 10 his second and 13 in 48 games in the truncated 2019-20 season. In the KHL, Kostin had seven goals and 11 assists in 43 regular-season games and had five goals and four assists in 24 playoff games. He also wasn’t shy on the ice, with 44 penalty minutes in the postseason alone.
That physicality is something that some thought the Blues were missing at points in the season.
“He’s a big dude,” said forward Brayden Schenn, “a big kid and we like it that he brings a little physicality to our team. Whether he’s playing in the playoffs or not (we don’t know), but we know on our roster we always have that guy that can play extremely hard, compete hard and bring energy for us as well as bring skill.”
The initial hope for the Blues was that they might have Kostin available for the final game of the regular season, but Kostin cleared quarantine and was able to play on Wednesday, which should give the coaching staff two games to look at him as they settle on a playoff roster. “It’s good that we can get him in a couple games,” Berube said.
Of course, whether or not Kostin gets in a playoff game is far from certain. If the Blues are at full health, they’ve got 12 forwards who have played a lot this season. But at the moment, Vladimir Tarasenko and Sammy Blais are out with injuries, though both could play on Thursday in the regular-season finale. If they’re healthy, that would likely bump Kyle Clifford and Mackenzie MacEachern out of the lineup, and adding Kostin would necessitate knocking out someone who has played the whole season here.
The Blues big push early on Wednesday came from their goalie, Ville Husso, who rebuffed Minnesota’s chances with some big saves early, and then Ivan Barbashev jammed in a rebound of a shot by David Perron and then Jaden Schwartz made it 2-0 as he tapped in a rebound of a shot by Jordan Kyrou. Torey Krug ended a run of 44 games without a goal when he swooped in to finish off a pass from Ryan O’Reilly in the second period. Krug got his other goal in the fifth game of the season and had been stuck on one ever since. David Perron got his 17th goal of the season and with a three-point game raised his season total to 55, meaning one more point and he’ll be the first Blue since Pavol Demitra in 2002-03 to average a point a game. Demitra had 93 points in an 82-game season.
