TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Victoriaville Tigres head coach Louis Robitaille laughed as he remembered his favourite Mikhail Abramov story.



Last season as a 17-year-old, Abramov got adjusted in the QMJHL, where the Tigres selected him out of CSKA Moscow’s under-18 program with their second pick of the 2018 CHL import draft, and Robitaille and his staff had felt that their uniquely talented, 154-pound new centre was getting pushed around a little too much.



Through some combination of Abramov’s broken English and the coaching staff’s even more broken Russian (they’d been trying to learn Russian so that Abramov knew they cared about his transition), they’d tried to communicate that to him.



And apparently, though they don’t know how, the message had been received. Later that night, Robitaille and his staff got word from Abramov’s billet that he’d been quietly doing pushups in his room.



“His...