Chinese Team Reveals They Nearly Landed Recent First Overall Pick

The KHL is the 2nd best league in the world and has teams all over the map. While a majority of their teams play in Russia, there are also teams from Finland, Belarus, and even China in the league.

The one Chinese team, the Kunlun Red Star has struggled since entering the KHL. Based in Beijing, they are the top Chinese team in the world but they struggle against their competition.

They finished 2nd to last in the KHL last season and were a ways away from making the playoffs. Despite this, they nearly landed a 1st overall pick back in 2021 who could have helped them out.

In a recent string of posts, the Red Star revealed how they almost landed 2022 1st overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky.

It's been an option back to spring 2021. In KHL, you can play 20-skaters roster if two of them are U-20 players. We were close to add him to the squad. Anyways, he had a great season in Finland then, playing the same line with Jack Rodewald who is our player now

The timelines add up as well with Slafkovsky not receiving a pro contract from TPS of the Finnish Liiga until May of 2021 so Kunlun could have landed him back then and enjoyed his services all of 2022.

With Kunlun's struggles, Slafkovsky's help certainly would have potentially propelled them into playoff contention.

Previously on HouseOfHockey

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17 AOUT \| 25 ANSWERS Chinese Team Reveals They Nearly Landed Recent First Overall Pick Would Juraj Slafkovsky have gone 1st overall if he was playing in China?
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