Devils Prospect Turned Social Media Influencer Earns KHL Tryout After 18-Month Hiatus

In 2017, the New Jersey Devils drafted Russian winger Nikita Popugaev in the fourth round out of Prince George of the WHL. He would spend two years in the KHL before coming back to North America, but he would never see NHL ice and spent most of his time over here in the ECHL. He spent a year with Dynamo Moscow and one with Neftekhimik, which is on the eastern coast of Russia, just northeast of North Korea. It's isolated enough that if I ended up there, I would probably start questioning life choices too.

After 12 games with Neftekhimik, he retired from pro hockey to become an Instagram influencer. In that time, he has amassed just over 40,000 followers on the platform, which is a lot of people, but hardly enough to pay the bills. As a result, the forward earned a professional with HK Sochi of the KHL after an 18-month break from hockey.

Popugaev has yet to break three points in a KHL season, and he hasn't played a game in a year and a half. So unless he undertook an intense new training regiment, his chances of cracking the roster for any pro team on a full-time basis seem slim. But I like to believe in the best of people, so hopefully he can resurrect his career, considering influencing on Instagram wasn't really his thing.

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