Two weeks ago, in an arena 90 minutes north of Ricoh Coliseum, someone else might have ended their drill on the wrong side of the ice. Someone else might have been looking to veterans for guidance, and someone else would almost certainly have been down on their knees, gathering all the pucks into a bag at the end of practice.



Nikita Korostelev was picked 10 places above Mitch Marner in the 2013 Ontario Hockey League draft, and he began the season as a Toronto Maple Leafs prospect. His career has never seemed to follow any straight line, though, which is in part how he found himself in Toronto on Wednesday, on an amateur tryout, cleaning up after a game day skate with the Laval Rocket.



“It works like this everywhere,” Korostelev said with a smile. “You're an old guy in the OHL, and then you're a young guy in pro, and you've got to pick them up — rookie duty.”



He is 21 years old and, in hockey terms, he has already seen the...