One of the Penguins’ more interesting prospects is under contract.<\/p>\n
The Penguins on Saturday signed Russian winger Mikhail Ilyin\u00a0to a three-year entry-level contract that begins next season. Ilyin was the Penguins’ fifth-round pick in 2023 and is listed at 6 foot 3 and 191 pounds.<\/p>\n
“Mikhail, we view as a really smart, 200-foot center,” then-Penguins’ director of amateur scouting Nick Pryor said of Ilyin after the 2023 draft. “He makes a lot of plays. Pass-first mindset, but he’s really diligent with and without the puck. I think he’s one of those guys that makes those around him better, makes his wingers better. Just a really smart player with and without it.”<\/p>\n
Ilyin, at just 20 years old, already has two and a half seasons of KHL experience with Severstal Cherepovets, where he’s amassed 19 goals and 42 assists in 150 career games. He had a career-high 30 points (seven goals, 23 assists) in 64 games last season.<\/p>\n
Ilyin grew up idolizing\u00a0Evgeni Malkin and told the KHL league site after he was drafted that he hopes to play with Malkin someday.<\/p>\n
“It feels great to be drafted by such a club,” Ilyin said of the Penguins picking him. “I would love to play with Malkin, but who knows if I will get a chance to do it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the Penguins’ more interesting prospects is under contract. The Penguins on Saturday signed Russian winger Mikhail…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,11727,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-59243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-mikhail-ilyin","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-penguins","12":"tag-pittsburgh","13":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","14":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}