Avalanche take a smart risk on former No. 1 overall pick Nail Yakupov

It’s not that long ago that Nail Yakupov was supposed to be hockey’s next big thing. He was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 NHL draft, selected ahead of players such as Alex Galchenyuk, Morgan Rielly, and Hampus Lindholm.

On Tuesday, Yakupov signed a one-year, $875,000 contract with the Colorado Avalanche. A half-decade after being anointed as part of a bright future for the Edmonton Oilers, he signed with the worst team in the league on a contract so cheap he can be buried in the AHL if needed.

When the Avalanche announced the move, there was no mention of Yakupov’s impressive pedigree or disappointing past. To GM Joe Sakic, he’s just another intriguing, affordable winger who hopefully can find his place in the mountains.

“Nail is a young, skilled winger who will add depth to our lineup,” Sakic said, via The Denver Post. “We look forward to seeing him at training camp.”

This is where Yakupov is at now, just a few years after being considered one of hockey’s top up-and-coming talents. He was once part of a young team in Edmonton full of high draft picks who were supposed to bring the team to the promised land. Instead, their constant flameouts eventually led the Oilers to Connor McDavid, who is the true savior the team had been waiting for all that time.

Yakupov, despite being picked in the same spot as McDavid, was never that kind of talent. His entire draft class, in retrospect, doesn’t look amazing. Galchenyuk, Rielly, Lindholm, and Filip Forsberg are great players, but there was no McDavid or Auston Matthews to be found. Still, as a No. 1 pick, the expectations bestowed on Yakupov were significant.

In Colorado, there will be no pressure like that. The media attention there will be nothing like it was in Edmonton. There will be the Broncos and Nuggets to sap away from mind share. Expectations will be low for an Avalanche team coming off a season that was nothing short of disastrous.

It could be the perfect place for Yakupov to thrive. Here’s why.

When Yakupov went to the Blues last year, he was already being viewed as a reclamation project. But in St. Louis, Yakupov was being given fourth-line roles when he’s simply not that kind of player. If Yakupov will ever maximize his gifts, it’ll be in a top-six or top-nine role where his scoring ability is able to flourish.

Colorado should be able to offer that right off the bat. The Avs appear to have their top nine set for next season, barring trades: Matt Duchene, Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, Tyson Jost, Mikko Rantanen, Colin Wilson, J.T. Compher, Sven Andrighetto, and Yakupov.

It’s not clear how those pieces will fit together yet, especially with Duchene’s future still uncertain, but this Avs forward group looks immediately better than the one that started last season. Maybe Yakupov starts on the top line next to Duchene and MacKinnon in an ideal role. Maybe he’s on a third line with, say, Wilson and Compher.

Either way, Yakupov will be given every opportunity to take a steady scoring role in Colorado, which badly needs players who can put the puck in the net. That’s not a chance he could get on a contender.

The big question regarding Yakupov’s underwhelming production to this point, more than anything: Why has his shooting percentage been so low? Since scoring on 21 percent of his shots as a rookie, Yakupov shot 7.6 percent over the past four seasons. That’s well below the league average of 8.7 percent (and the average for forwards is even higher).

In terms of generating shots, Yakupov was on a good track before his time in St. Louis, where he was misused. He went from 5.7 shots per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play as a rookie to 9.1 shots per 60 in 2015-16. But the goals weren’t there because he shot just 6.3 percent.

Part of this could be explained by bad teammates. Higher-quality teammates lead to better passing, and research has shown that better passing can lead to better shot quality, which in turn leads to higher shooting percentages.

Yakupov, to some degree, could be a victim of that given he wasn’t exactly playing with studs in Edmonton all the time. During his final year with the Oilers, his primary linemates were Mark Letestu, Benoit Pouliot, Lauri Korpikoski, and McDavid, per Natural Stat Trick. Unsurprisingly, the McDavid-Yakupov combo was far more effective (3.81 goals/60) than the Letestu-Yakupov combo (0.98 goals/60), which was a total mess.

So what if the Avalanche can get Yakupov into better situations with talented players like MacKinnon, Landeskog, Rantanen, and Jost? There’s a lot of potential for him to rebound.

Everywhere Yakupov has gone, he’s been the former No. 1 pick trying to churn back up the hype train. In Colorado, they’re just hoping he can be an acceptable secondary scorer on a team trying to claw back to respectability.

At this point, Yakupov has already spent much of his cache around the league. Now on his third, and potentially final, NHL opportunity, there has to be a good deal of pressure on the 23-year-old to make it happen. Otherwise, he’s going to go down as one of the worst No. 1 overall picks in NHL history.

So there’s no denying that Yakupov has a lot riding on the next few months. His NHL career may be on the line.

But in Colorado, that’s basically all the pressure that Yakupov will have. The Avalanche’s financial commitment is minimal. His cap hit is low enough that he can be waived and assigned to the AHL with his entire contract buried. If this doesn’t work out, it’ll be next man up in Colorado, and everyone will move on. The stakes are otherwise as low as they can get.

Expectations are in the gutter for Yakupov. If he can come out and score 15-20 goals for the Avalanche next season, it’ll be considered a major win for both sides. That seems like something he could pull off considering he once scored 17 goals in 48 games as a 19-year-old.

This is precisely the kind of place Yakupov needed to go. There might not have been another team in the NHL with the Avalanche’s roster opening and desperation. Yakupov also couldn’t afford to get stuck on another contender’s fourth line. He needed to go somewhere with a longer leash, and he found it.

If the Avs can tap into his potential, that $875,000 price tag could look like one of the summer’s biggest bargains.