[sureLoss]

https://www.nhl.com/flames/news/i-th...rk/c-319371836

Chechelev was barely on the radar for the other 30 teams for most of the season. But the Flames, identifying who they believed to be a dark horse, turned to goaltending coaches Jordan Sigalet and Thomas Steer (Stockton Heat) for their thoughts and expertise.

The pair pored over hours of video and came to the conclusion that Chechelev was the real deal and worthy of the pick before others could swoop in and steal him.

"We kind of found him by mistake," Sigalet laughed. "When the USHL draft happened, he was picked by Sioux City and the head coach there is Luke Strand, who I worked with back in the day with Abbotsford in the AHL. We were trying to go through every goalie possible in this draft, since we had so much time with the COVID situation disrupting things.

"We started watching video on all the USHL draft guys and he was one of them - a late pick. I contacted Robert Neuhauser, who's one of our amateur scouts in Europe and he must have gotten us 25-30 games on Chechelev. So, Thomas and I started to watch him. His consistency, the athleticism he has, his compete level ... He gave his team a chance to win every game and you rarely saw a bad goal, let alone a bad game.

"He's a guy that we were hoping to take late and grab him as a sleeper, but we started to hear teams were poking around on him, so we thought it would be a good idea to take him in the fourth round before he slipped away to anyone else."

Sigalet and general manager Brad Treliving saw the interest in Chechelev pick up around the midway point of the season - shortly after he made his lone appearance in Russia's second-highest pro league, the VHL, with HK Ryazan.

Naturally, he got a shutout that night.