Roadrunners Forward Egor Sokolov joined Jonathon Schaffer and Kim Cota-Robles on this week’s Happy Hour Show. For the complete conversation and to hear about Egor’s song of the summer, download this week’s show below.
Listen to “The New Guy From Yekaterinburg” on Spreaker.
How has the transition to Tucson been? You guys had a pretty physical practice today.
It’s been a lot of fun; new organization, new beginning for me. I’ve been pleased so far. Yeah, it was a tough practice out there today for sure. We have a lot of time to recover before the first game. So, it’s good to get that stuff out of the way for this week. I’m just excited for the next games, that’s the main focus, right?
Tell us a little bit about growing up in Russia. Your hometown is Yekaterinburg?
Yeah, Yekaterinburg. I grew up there, and then when I was 13, I moved to another city in Russia. It’s called Chelyabinsk. As a 13-year-old, I made my way over there, by myself, without my parents. It was only a two-hour drive, but my parents couldn’t be there all the time. I lived in a house where there was a few of us guys from different cities. We had a chef who cooked meals and people who looked after us. They made sure we were going home on time and stuff like that. We didn’t have billet families in Russia; it was about 13 or 14 of us in the house. It was like a school, a hockey school. You start young, at six or seven years old, you become a team with guys your age and you just grow together and play every year together. You get different guys, but most of the core is like, “if I’m from this town, I’ll be there.” There are rarely guys making moves. I was one of the guys who made a move. The team I went to was ranked probably first in Russia in our age group. I had to try to move on because I was really dominant in Yekaterinburg, but our team wasn’t so good. I played four years there, became a captain on that team, everything progressed really well. So, at 17, I had to make a decision if I want to continue to play at home or I want to try to play in North America. It was a tough decision and obviously, I decided to come over. I played three years in Cape Breton, in the QMJHL, and then so my first and second year I went undrafted in the NHL draft and then my third year of eligibility, I got drafted in the second round by the Senators. Since then, I played for four years in in Senator’s organization; got my first NHL game and first…
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