He’s the player who joined the New York Islanders from the Toronto Maple Leafs alongside Mikhail Grabovski on the second day of free agency in 2014. He’s also the one who made that funny Brooklyn Russian hipster video with Grabovski and scored a crucial goal in Game 6 at Nassau Coliseum in 2015. That’s the same Nikolay Kulemin.
Currently, he’s not listed among the participants for the New York Islanders alumni weekend. Since he last played in the NHL with the Islanders in 2017, Kulemin is seeking a return to North American hockey. He’s signed a professional tryout (PTO) with the Ottawa Senators and will compete for a spot on their roster during training camp later this month.
This marks the second consecutive year that a former Islander has signed a PTO with the Senators; Josh Bailey did the same last season but was eventually released and did not play in the NHL or elsewhere last year.
The 38-year-old Russian has spent the past six seasons in the KHL, playing three years with Magnitogorsk Metallurg and the last three with Ufa Salavat Yulayev. Last season, he recorded 13 goals and 12 assists in 46 games. Kulemin’s most productive years were with the Leafs, where he scored 30 goals in the 2011-12 season, but he never surpassed 15 goals in any subsequent season, matching that total during his first year with the Islanders in 2014-15.
He was sidelined by a season-ending upper body injury in 2017, which restricted him to only 13 games in the final year of his contract with the Islanders before moving to the KHL.
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