SAGINAW, Mich. — When Saginaw Spirit general manager Dave Drinkill talks about Dima Zhilkin, this is where he starts: “He’s a competitive little prick.”
Chris Lazary, the Spirit’s head coach, calls Zhilkin a rat.
There are other things they’ll say about him.
“He has always been a pro. He can kill penalties, he can play on the power play, he fights, he’s got jam to him, he’s a leader,” Drinkill says.
The Spirit selected Zhilkin with the 19th pick in the 2024 OHL draft. He was eighth on his Toronto Jr. Canadiens U16 AAA team in scoring that year with just 22 points in 34 games as a 5-foot-6 winger.
But he played with drive, and he was a late-birthday who was also one of the youngest players on that AAA team. The Spirit felt that he was going to make the most of the runway that he had.
Two seasons later, Zhilkin is still a full year out from his NHL Draft year in 2027, and he’s already, in Drinkill’s eyes, the Spirit’s best player. Next year, he expects he’ll be their captain, too.
And he’s found a home away from the rink in Saginaw.
Zhilkin leads all 2027 NHL Draft-eligible OHL players in scoring with 14 goals and 24 points in 19 games this season. (Eric Young / OHL Images)
Kevin Smiley can still remember the first day he opened his doors to a billet.
It was the day of the national championship in college football, Jan. 7, 2013. John Llewelyn, a former billet of the Spirit who worked at the hospital with his wife, Kristen (an interventional radiologist), had brought defenseman Jesse Graham by because he needed a place to stay.
At the time, the Smileys had young kids, and so Kevin had told him, “Well, bring Jesse over and we’ll meet him and see if he wants to be in our house and if it’s a good fit.”
When he showed up, Kevin was plowing snow in their driveway. When Graham hopped out of Llewelyn’s car with a duffel bag, he remembers thinking, “Well, it’s going to be awkward if we say no.”
After tucking his kids to bed at halftime, suddenly he was sitting next to a stranger on his couch.
When Smiley tells that story today, he smiles ear to ear when he says that “by the next day, Jesse was a part of our family.”
Until that moment, the Smileys were always a soccer family. Though they have a pond in their backyard in Saginaw’s Chestnut Grove neighborhood, they rarely skated on it.
These days, though, they’re a hockey family. Zhilkin is their newest billet son, Smiley is retired, and they don’t miss a game.
They’ll often even go to road games in Flint, Sault Ste. Marie and Windsor (where Zhilkin’s parents, Anna and Boris, now live), too. They took two breaks from billeting when their two boys were in their senior years of high school but once they left home, Spirit assistant general manager Brian Prout, who oversees their billet program, asked them if they’d take Zhilkin in during their 2024 Memorial Cup run for a few weeks after the league permitted Zhilkin to be around the team immediately after they drafted him.
Those few weeks have turned into two seasons (it’ll be three when Zhilkin returns for his draft year next year instead of going the college route). When the Spirit asked the Smileys if he could come back for his rookie season a year ago, Kristen told them, “You gave us a puppy for a few weeks and then said, ‘Now he’s gone.’ Absolutely.”
Sitting in his living room with their golden doodle Zoey in his lap ahead of a three-in-three weekend slate of games, Smiley, who used to substitute teach and always cherished when kids would scream to their friends “We’ve got Mr. Smiley today!” when he’d show up, says billeting Zhilkin has given him that feeling back.
More than a decade after having Graham stay with them, they attended his wedding and gifted him his jersey from the outdoor game he played in with Saginaw. On Mother’s Day, Graham’s text to Kristen often beats her own kids’. In their basement, they’ve got framed photos and memorabilia from all of their former players — from Graham to NHL Draft picks like Nick Moutrey, Jake Paterson and Markus Niemelainen. It was a hard Christmas the year that Moutrey and Paterson were traded days apart. Before Paterson left, he insisted on dropping by both of the kids’ schools to give them hugs goodbye.
They’re not looking forward to that eventual goodbye with Zhilkin and say they’ve developed a particularly special relationship with him.,
Last season, before Zhilkin had even played his first game with the Spirit, the Smileys helped the then-15-year-old through his first injury after he took a knee to his quad in an exhibition game, and it turned into a hematoma.
The morning after it happened, Zhilkin called Drinkill to ask if he could skip a team event because his leg was bothering him. Drinkill, who was on the way to St. Lucia for his honeymoon, told him, “Well, you kind of have to do a team event.” When he landed, Zhilkin was in the hospital.
As Smiley told that story, Zhilkin, dressed in his suit for the game, flipped through photos on his phone of the swelling.
Left: Zhilkin and the Smileys on billet night. Right: Zhilkin’s hematoma. (Scott Wheeler / The Athletic)
He didn’t play until November of that year and had to miss playing for Canada at U17 worlds, where he would have been on Drinkill’s team.
“We missed him a ton. It’s probably why we lost in the gold medal game,” Drinkill says from the Smiley living room. “He proved it at Hlinka this year (where he scored three goals in five games). He ended up being one of their go-to guys by the end of it.”
More time spent away during the injury helped bring him even closer to the Smileys. Zhilkin talks about their place as his second home now, and talks fondly of getting them out onto the pond last winter.
“You don’t know what you’re expecting with a billet, especially coming into your first year as a 15- and 16-year-old. It’s tough moving away from family. But they’ve welcomed me so easily, and everything just clicked. I’m super happy to be here,” Zhilkin said.
They’ll have movie nights, ping pong matches and play pool in the basement. The night before The Athletic’s visit, they were playing cards together. A few nights before that, when Zhilkin turned 17, his mom, dad and sister came over, and Smiley asked him what he liked to have for dessert on his birthday. He told him pancho, a Russian cake that he gets from a bakery whenever he’s home. (Zhilkin moved to Canada from Russia when he was 8, two and a half years after his mom, sister and older brother, Danny, a prospect of the Winnipeg Jets, did, while he and his dad awaited their visas.)
So Smiley made him pancho, and the family ate it all.
When they were done, Anna told her son’s billet dad, “This is exactly what it tastes like.”
“Well, you made my heart feel good,” Smiley answered.
He has also taught himself how to make borscht, a Russian stew, and pelmeni, a kind of dumpling.
Zhilkin and his birthday pancho. (Kevin Smiley)
Smiley talks about Boris, who still speaks very little English and communicates primarily using his phone as his translator, as “just so thankful.”
“Oh, Kevin, you my friend,” Boris will say to Smiley whenever he sees him.
Smiley laughs about a game during Zhilkin’s rookie season when Boris looked back down at a stream of one of Danny’s games on his phone while Zhilkin was in the middle of a fight, numb to that competitiveness that everyone else now sees. Though Boris and Anna didn’t attend the game against Erie, instead making the trip to see Danny play in Grand Rapids with the Manitoba Moose, they were in Windsor for the tail end of their three-in-three and having them a couple of hours away has been big for Zhilkin.
“He showed me his phone after the Memorial Cup, and it said ‘You’re the first person I’ve ever entrusted my son to,’” Smiley said.
Smiley, who noted that he doesn’t like winter and would eventually like to travel in his retirement, said he would have only made the three-year commitment they made for Zhilkin.
“We absolutely love having him,” Smiley said. “We get to provide a safe space to be away, and we were so happy to really get back into billeting with Dima.”
Zhilkin insists his second family has helped him perform on the ice, too.
He describes himself as a poised playmaker who can create under pressure and past defenders, but also likes to play in the dirty areas and defend.
His linemate, top 2026 prospect Nikita Klepov, describes him as “a hard-skill guy.” Lazary calls him a future first-round pick who’s still growing. He’s now 5-foot-10 and change, and if he gets another inch or two (Danny is 6-foot-1), they think his first-round projection could become a top-of-the-draft one next year.
When the puck dropped on the three-in-three at the end of October, he already had 11 points in just six games to start the year.
By the end of the weekend, he’d made it 16 points in nine games, capped off by a hat trick against the 11-2-1 first-place Windsor Spitfires and the dagger in the shootout.
The “competitive prick” came out late in the third period when he took a slashing penalty in the offensive zone with the Spirit trailing 4-3 and on the power play.
He made up for it when he came out of the box and immediately scored to tie the game.
“He’s got everything,” Drinkill said when it was over.