Toronto Maple Leafs: Pay Attention To Igor Ozhiganov

As the regular season approaches, I wanted to take a look at Igor Ozhiganov, who signed a one-year contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs earlier this off-season.

Ozhiganov hails from Krasnogorsk, Russia. For those unfamiliar with Russia, Krasnogorsk is a stone’s throw from Moscow. It’s one of the western suburbs of Moscow and is also the birthplace of the former president of Russian Ice Hockey Federation, Vladimir Petrov.

Ozhiganov began his hockey career in the CSKA Moscow system. CSKA Moscow is one of the most prestigious hockey teams in the Kontinental Hockey League and has helped sparked the careers of Sergei Fedorov, Sergei Brylin, Sergei Zubov, Nikolai Khabibulin, Nikita Kucherov and former Toronto Maple Leafs forward, Alexander Mogilny. Hopefully, one day, Ozhiganov’s name will one day be in the same spotlight as the players mentioned above.

Over the course of his career in the KHL, he spent most of his time with CSKA, but he did have some brief stints with some other clubs. He played almost a full season for Amur Khabarovsk in his 2012-13 regular season and played two seasons with HC Sibir Novosibirsk. In addition, he played alongside current Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman, Nikita Zaitsev during his stint on CSKA.

In his 8 seasons in the KHL, the right-handed 25-year-old defenseman registered 29 goals, 63 assists and 241 PIM. During his stay in the KHL, he also saw a decent amount of playoff hockey. In fact, he helped HC Sibir Novosibirsk finish 1st in the Chernyshev Division in the 2014-15 season and his defensive skill-set was pivotal in helping the club make it to the Conference Finals. In HC Sibir Novosibirsk’s playoff run, he registered 2 goals and 3 assists in 16 games played.

What Ozhiganov Brings To The Table

In October of 2017, Rory Boylen of Rogers Sportsnet wrote a scouting report on Ozhiganov.

As you can see from the tweet below, Johnston brought up that he moves well on the ice and has a quite a shot. He wasn’t lying about Ozhiganov’s shot, as the 25 year old won the hardest shot competition at the 2016-2017 KHL All Star Game festivities.

Boylen also shared that Ozhiganov isn’t someone that you’d want to mess around with. Due to his size, he isn’t afraid to use his body to hit the opposition. NHL.com lists him as a 6’2″, 207 lbs defenseman. If you compared Ozhiganov’s height/weight to the defensemen that Mike Babcock and Lou Lamoriello chose to use day-in, night-out last year, you’d see that he’d be the second biggest defenseman aside from Morgan Rielly.

While the scouting report sounds great, he’ll still have to put up a solid fight in training camp and pre-season to earn a spot on the Toronto Maple Leafs day one roster.

He’d have to show Mike Babcock and the Maple Leafs coaching staff that he’s ready to play on North American ice.  While the Leafs are thin on the right side, there is still quite a few players competing or spots: Carrick, Hainsey, Borgman, Rosen, Liljegren, and Holl to name a few.

If he shows in the pre-season that he’s ready to go, he’ll likely take ownership of Roman Polak‘s role from last season. Last season, Babcock decided to alternate between Polak and Connor Carrick. Based on the match-ups, Babcock would choose if he wanted more of a physical defenseman or a solid two-way defenseman who can move with puck extremely well. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the pre-season, but we may get the opportunity to see Ozhiganov play regularly this upcoming season.

While we aren’t sure what will happen, it is fun to think of the possibilities. All-in-all, the signing of Ozhiganov was a no-risk deal and hopefully he’ll blossom into an outstanding NHL defenseman.

research from wikipedia.com, stats from NHL.com and wikipedia.com