Naturally, the most valuable specimens are the first to go. It is very pleasing that one of the main heroes of the 2003 draft, a contender for the first pick, was a product of Kyiv hockey, Nikolai Zherdev.
Unfortunately, he failed to become the first pick (he got the fourth). The poor performance of the Russian junior national team (Zherdev, following the example of many talented Ukrainian juniors, had accepted Russian citizenship) at this year's World Championship hindered him. The loss of documents also hindered him, delaying his departure to North America and ruining interviews with managers of professional clubs - potential suitors for his talent.
But even so, Zherdev, who will turn 19 on November 5, has something to be proud of. First, he is the third product of Ukrainian hockey to make it into the top five of the draft (in '94, Anaheim chose Donetsk native Oleg Tverdovsky with the second pick, and in '98, Kharkiv native Vitaly Vishnevsky with the fifth).
Moreover, representatives of Columbus, who acquired the young man, declared publicly that Zherdev was their main goal. Consequently, the ex-Kyivan, so to speak, ended up in the right place.
But did he? It is still difficult to say whether Nikolai will play in the NHL this season. After all, it is not ruled out that he will play another year for Moscow CSKA under the guidance of the legendary coach Viktor Tikhonov. But these are already details.
By the way, in the first round of the 2003 draft, another CSKA hockey player was selected - Belarusian Andrei Kostitsyn. Although about four dozen natives of the former Soviet republics had been preparing for the selection procedure.
It is probably worth mentioning that products of Ukrainian hockey have been selected in the first round of the draft only nine times. The first time this happened was in 1993 (Kyivan Bohdan Savenko), and the last time before Zherdev was a year ago (another Kyivan - Anton Babchuk).