Puck-handling big part of Berdin’s game

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This article was published 28/06/2019 (2262 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mikhail Berdin is a playful guy, on and off the ice.

The young goaltender’s English is still a work in progress but he’s engaging and comical, nonetheless, and commands a room when given the chance. He’s also, unquestionably, the most skilled puck-handler of any netminder in the Winnipeg Jets system and has free reign to flash his creative side when he roams from the crease.

Berdin, or ‘Birdman’ to his teammates, is coming off his first pro season split between the Jets’ two minor-league squads, the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and the Jacksonville Icemen of the ECHL. Up with the Moose, the 21-year-old from Ufa, Russia made an immediate impression in Winnipeg with his ability to corral pucks behind the net and send crisp, accurate passes to his defenceman.

In today’s NHL where oncoming forwards race in on the forecheck with blazing speed, it’s a boon for an organization to have a goalie adept at opening up time and space for his blue-liners. Berdin, who scored a goal (and celebrated famously) in junior two years ago that still generates clicks on YouTube, absolutely loves that part of the job and is grateful it’s a skill appreciated by his employers.

“I’m so excited they let me play how I want,” he said Friday from Jets development camp at Bell MTS Iceplex. “When I played in Russia, coach doesn’t let me play with puck a lot. They say to me every time, ‘Stay in the net, your job is to make saves.’ But I talk with (Moose coach Pascal Vincent) and goalie coach here (Moose goalie development coach Rick St. Croix) and they work with me to play the puck a lot, and I’m so excited for this.

“I like to play the puck. But when my defence likes it, too, it’s really good. I feel unbelievable. I try to make my defence make easy plays. It’s why I do this.”

Berdin bounced up and down from the AHL and ECHL last year but was 12-11-0 when called upon by the Moose, registering a 2.34 goals-against average and impressive .927 save percentage, while playing behind Eric Comrie, the squad’s No. 1 masked man. It’s a likely partnership once again for Manitoba for the 2019-20 season, although Comrie’s future is cloudy because he is no longer waiver exempt. If he’s moved, that could create a hefty workload for Berdin.

Vincent said this week he’s supportive of Berdin’s penchant for acting as a third defenceman, noting the benefits of his puck-handling far outweigh the occasional gaffes that are easily forgiven.

“I welcome his stick-handling. There was a goal we gave up in Laval last year. He stopped the puck behind the net and he made a play. They stopped it, got the puck and made a pass to the net front, and he almost came back but they scored. We have different ways to see that play. We could tell him, ‘Hey, slow down here. Take a deep breath. You don’t have to play every single puck.’ And I don’t see it that way because that play’s going to be made 99 times out of 100 and it’s going to be a good play, and we’ll deal with some of those sequences where it doesn’t work,” said Vincent.

“But he’s so talented at playing the puck. We’ve seen after a while teams will change their way of forechecking or dumping the puck in just because he was in the net. It’s a huge skill. And even (this week), we had a drill where the goalie had to stop the puck behind the net and had to make a pass, and (Berdin’s) pass was hard and on the tape. His ability to get out of the net, stop the puck and make a play is something we can use in the future and it’s going to be an asset.”

Puck-handling wasn’t a skill acquired overnight, Berdin said.

As a youngster, he watched as many NHL games and highlight packages as he could and was immediately attracted to the style of NHL hall-of-famer Martin Brodeur, who showed over the course of his remarkable 22-year career just how critical a goalie’s puck-handling skill could be for a team.

In his early teens, Berdin moved more than 1,000 kilometres away to Moscow to continue his development as a goaltender. At 18, he was picked by the Jets in the sixth round (157th overall) of the 2016 NHL draft, and that fall headed to Sioux Falls, S.D., to tend the Stampede net in the USHL.

Early in his second campaign with Sioux Falls, he collected a loose puck behind his net and fired it the length of the ice into the empty Muskegon Lumberjacks’ net.

Berdin, showing his cheeky side, vows it won’t be his last tally.

“Yeah, I had couple chances here (with Jacksonville), it was really close. I shoot like three or four times. Don’t worry, I will score,” he said, adding he receives plenty of chirps for his unorthodox approach. “They laugh and say, “How’d you do this? You have balls for doing this.'”

This week, he wasn’t just stopping and transferring pucks, he’s was the official translator for the only other Russian in camp, 26-year-old Andrei Chibisov, signed to a one-year, entry-level deal earlier this month. Chibisov doesn’t speak a word of English and Berdin was happy to aid a fellow countryman, just like a former Jet helped him a few years ago.

“It was same as me when I came here a few years ago. I didn’t understand anything. I sit in this spot and every guy’s asking me something, ‘How am I doing? What’s up?’ I didn’t understand anything,” he said. “(Alexander) Burmistrov played here and he helped me a lot and translated a lot, and now I’m like taking Burmi’s spot. I’m translator for this guy.”

 

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell