OSTRAVA, Czech Republic — Alexander Khovanov is one of the hottest prospects in hockey.



These days, he’s the Moncton Wildcats’ unstoppable junior hockey force and Team Russia’s first-line center.



This the player he was supposed to be, the one he was meant to be. This is the kid who grew up terrorizing Russia’s minor hockey ranks with his youth team Lada Togliatti, and the one who posted 22 points in 29 MHL games, a league dominated by 19-year-olds, at 16.



For a long time, much of his childhood and into his teenage years, really, this is the kid who was widely regarded to be the second-best player in his age group, behind only would-be second overall NHL draft pick Andrei Svechnikov.



There was Grigori Denisenko and Vitali Kravtsov and Alexander Alexeyev, who all joined Svechnikov in the first round, and there was Alexander Romanov and Kirill Marchenko, who weren’t far behind. But there was also supposed to be...