When Sylvain Favreau and Yanick Lemay arrived in Drummondville last summer, the first thing on their to-do list was to make a wish list.
Favreau, an up-and-coming head coach, had just left the QMJHL’s Halifax Mooseheads to take the job with the Voltigeurs, and Lemay, an amateur scout of 12 years with the Winnipeg Jets, had been hired as the Voltigeurs’ new general manager.
Both knew they were inheriting a decent team on paper, but nobody knew just how good they’d become. Favreau had coached against them, but they were in different conferences and he wasn’t as familiar with his new roster as he’d liked. Lemay was new to the league altogether.
As they looked around the league at potential trade targets and settled into the season, there was one name they both circled very early on: Vsevolod Komarov.
Lemay had scouted him with the Jets when he’d arrived as an import player in Quebec City and had liked him from the get-go. Favreau had coached against him in the QMJHL finals the spring prior when Komarov’s Remparts beat his Mooseheads in six games. He’d watched him progress from 19 points in 60 games in his draft year — just enough to get selected at No. 134 by the Buffalo Sabres — to 50 points in 84 games and QMJHL and Memorial Cup champion in his post-draft season, quickly earning an entry-level contract (surprisingly quickly for a fifth-round pick when the Sabres signed him two Mays ago after that Memorial Cup win).
Lemay’s vision for the Voltigeurs was to build a “Q version” of Vegas’ Stanley Cup-winning team of the season prior, with a focus on a big back end filled with competitive and smart players. They already had that in then-Arizona Coyotes first-rounder Maveric Lamoureux and veteran Mikael Diotte, but they wanted a three-headed monster and Komarov fit the bill.
Knowing the Remparts were entering a rebuild post-championship(s) and that Komarov was entering his third and final QMJHL season as a 19-year-old who’d turn 20 in January, “it became evident pretty quickly that Komarov was one of those guys that we had to target,” Favreau said.
After being named an alternate captain and getting off to a hot start with a young team in Quebec City, registering 19 points in 22 games in the fall, Lemay was finally able to swing a deal for the 6-foot-3, right-shot Russian defenseman in early December as part of a blockbuster trade that sent two players and four draft picks to the Remparts.
“To bring a guy like Komarov, he gave us a lot of size, compete and hockey sense and it would not be easy come playoff time to come to Drummondville. That was the plan,” Lemay said. “And as soon as we finished the deal for Komarov, we knew that we were going for it. He was the key piece.”
What they didn’t know was just how key a piece he’d become — that he was closer to a top NHL prospect than simply a top QMJHL player.
They quickly learned, though, after Lamoureux went down with a season-ending shoulder injury a month later.
Komarov was traded to the Voltigeurs midway through last season where he won his second QMJHL championship. (Eric Young / CHL Images)
Without Lamoureux, Komarov stepped up, registering 50 points in just 38 games with the Voltigeurs to lead all QMJHL defensemen in points with 69 in 60 games.
At season’s end, he was named the QMJHL’s defenseman of the year. Still without Lamoureux, he then led the Voltigeurs to a QMJHL championship, winning his second consecutive title and, this time, QMJHL playoffs MVP with another 15 points in 19 games. Though he wasn’t able to also win back-to-back Memorial Cups, he’d finish his third and final year of junior with 86 points in 82 games split between the regular season, the playoffs and the Memorial Cup.
“(Remparts coaches) Patrick (Roy) and Benoit Desrosiers had done a really good job with him in Quebec and his progression there. And then when we got him, he just kind of took off,” Favreau said. “And he’s such a unique player as far as his hard skills away from the puck and then his soft skills with the puck and being able to make plays, and his vision. So when you combine all of that together, it made for an extremely great hockey player.”
In the end, Favreau thought Komarov was probably the team’s most valuable player and Lemay called him the biggest reason they won a QMJHL title.
“When we lost Lamoureux, it’s a good thing that by chance we went to get Komarov,” Lemay said. “With the loss of Lamoureux, we told all the D it was an opportunity to have a bigger role and he really did that.”
The player Lemay had scouted with the Jets had “really improved, slowly and surely.”
“You could see right from the start that the hockey sense was there, the compete was there, and the poise. He just needed to get stronger and get his legs under him, move quicker. And he had the size as well,” Lemay said of the Komarov he’d watched in his draft year. “So it was just a matter of time for him I think to mature physically and get more powerful and that’s what he did the last two years.”
Once they had him, they also learned he was more than just one of the best players in the league. Favreau was struck by his great English, positive mood and contagious spirit. Lemay was struck by his passion, his work ethic and the way his competitiveness spilled into practice.
“Firstly, he’s a great individual,” added Lemay. “He’s a very good kid. And on the ice, he’s a workhorse who can log a lot of minutes. And what I like at our level, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to do the same thing in the near future at the next level, is he really improved his offense. It was already starting to improve last year but it really took the next step here in terms of offense. But what people really underestimate is how good he is defensively and how hard it is to play against him. Like he can block shots, he’s got a very good stick, good gap, and he can finish his check as well. He can do it all.”
When they parted ways after the season, Favreau and Lemay both knew the Sabres had a good one.
Favreau describes his game as “so stable” and “so reliable” but “yet very skilled.”
“I think he’s an NHL player,” Favreau simply said. “At the NHL level he’s going to be classified as a two-way defenseman but somebody who can escape out of trouble, make a first pass, bring a little bit of offense, and probably one of the best sticks that I’ve seen in my eight years in the Q, and I’ve seen a lot of really good defensemen.”
Lemay said if he was working for the Sabres he’d be thrilled to have Komarov, especially as a fifth-round pick.
“I know they are happy with him,” Lemay said. “He just needed to get stronger and he still has a ways to go. He’s a big guy but he’s still a little immature physically. He can still improve his quickness a little bit, his pivots and first step, but it has already improved a lot so if you project in a few years, I can’t see why it won’t continue to improve. And the rest of his game, he has it all.”
Komarov was chosen by the Sabres with the No. 134 pick in the 2022 NHL Draft. (Ghyslain Bergeron / Drummondville Voltigeurs)
Nathan Paetsch is getting a front-row seat to Komarov’s rise. He was a player development coach with the Sabres when they drafted Komarov and has since moved up to coach the defensemen in Rochester where Komarov is expected to play this season. Because Komarov came to North America when he was 17 years old, the player development process was smoother than it is for other Russian players. Paetsch needed Zoom calls and a translator to have conversations with Nikita Novikov, Buffalo’s sixth-round pick in 2021. But he was able to drive up to Quebec to see Komarov’s games and take him out to dinner. Komarov’s English improved quickly as he was surrounded by people who spoke the language, too.
Paetsch noticed something special about Komarov as a person, describing him as someone who has the “it factor.” When Paetsch drove up to watch Komarov’s games in Quebec, he would often call Sabres assistant general manager Jerry Forton to tell him he thought Komarov was the best player on the ice.
“It was consistent,” Paetsch said. “There were first- and second-rounders on the ice, and I thought he was the best player. By the second half of that first post-draft year, I could really see him flourishing.”
Paetsch knows if the draft were held today, Komarov wouldn’t go in the fifth round and thinks the fact Komarov was dealing with the transition from Russia to North America during his 17-year-old season might have caused him to slip in the draft. But Komarov quickly adjusted to life on the other side of the world, which started with immersing himself in the lives of his billets. Paetsch recalled one visit when Komarov’s billet mom pulled him aside to tell him Komarov had snuck off to buy Christmas gifts for her kids. He’d routinely play pond hockey with them, too.
“They helped me a lot,” Komarov said with a smile after a recent Sabres rookie camp practice. “I came and didn’t know any English. I was just trying to learn simple words like ‘hi’ and ‘thank you.’ It was so fun. I was with them for like two and a half years. We still talk. They were so helpful.”
The more comfortable Komarov got off the ice, the better he played on it. At first, he was just looking at what coaches drew on the whiteboard and trying to figure out the drills from there. It took a few months before he started understanding what coaches and teammates were saying on the ice, and now he’s conversational in English. He didn’t have other Russians on his team, so he had to push himself to learn faster if he wanted to have relationships with his teammates and coaches — and that’s the part of the game Komarov loves most.
When Paetsch’s son was playing in a tournament in Quebec, Komarov came to the locker room to talk to the team.
“His teammates love him,” Paetsch said. “He just has a kind heart. He’s a genuine, happy and caring person. He cares about people and it’s organic.”
Now he’s getting ready to make the jump to the AHL, where he’ll have some Russian teammates again — Aleksandr Kisakov, Novikov and Viktor Neuchev have already been in Rochester and can give Komarov a taste of home. Paetsch knows Komarov will be in for an adjustment since there won’t be as much time and space in the AHL, but Komarov’s ability to work under pressure is already advanced.
“He has elite composure and hockey sense,” Paetsch said. “A lot of young (defensemen), they get the puck and they panic. There’s just no panic to his game, so he can make those tight-area plays in small spaces. A lot of D can’t make those plays at that size.”
That’s why he’s become such a point producer. His 6-foot-3 frame, long hair and rugged style stand out on the ice at first glance. But with each passing year, the way he can handle, transition and shoot the puck makes him look like a legitimate NHL prospect.
“I always love to play offense,” Komarov said. “I’m not trying to play offense or defense. I want to play everywhere. I like the game of how to play like Erik Karlsson and at the same time I like how to play like Dustin Byfuglien. I want to have everything on the ice to help the team win.”
That attitude and the on-ice performance made Komarov a player to watch at Buffalo’s rookie tournament over the weekend, where he quarterbacked one of the two power-play units and was used in late-game situations to press for offense. And if he can take another jump in the AHL, he’ll keep reminding the rest of the league what they missed.
“Let’s be honest, we got a steal in the fifth round,” Paetsch said.