{"id":12176,"date":"2017-07-04T12:42:30","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T16:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=12176"},"modified":"2017-07-04T12:59:50","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T16:59:50","slug":"nail-yakupov-signs-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2017\/07\/04\/nail-yakupov-signs-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Nail Yakupov Signs With the Colorado Avalanche"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Winger <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/y\/yakupna01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nail Yakupov<\/a> has signed a one-year deal with the Colorado Avalanche. The deal is worth $875,000 next season. Yakupov became an unrestricted free agent this off-season when the St. Louis Blues did not extend a qualifying offer to him. The Russian right winger spent last season with the Blues, playing 40 games, tallying three goals, six assists.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We have signed Nail Yakupov! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DevSuZKIih\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/DevSuZKIih<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Avalanche\/status\/882275448243318784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Nail Yakupov Signs With<\/h2>\n<p>Yakupov impressed as a rookie on a young Oilers team in his first season with 31 points in 48 games in the shortened lockout season of 2012-2013. His best season was 2014-2015 when he played 81 games recording 14 goals and 19 assists. However he was a -35 that season, the worst +\/- number in the entire league.<\/p>\n<p>The former first overall pick of the 2012 NHL draft was traded by the Edmonton Oilers to the St. Louis Blues in exchange\u00a0for a conditional 2017 third round pick and prospect <strong>Zach Pochiro<\/strong> on <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2016\/10\/07\/nail-yakupov-traded\/\" target=\"_self\">October 7th 2016<\/a>. The condition on the draft pick was that if Yakupov scored 15 or more goals the pick would be upgraded to a second round pick. He had spent four seasons with the Oilers from 2012-2016. In his time there he played 252 games, scored 50 goals, had 61 assists and was a -88 total.<\/p>\n<p>The 23-year-old has struggled to transition to the NHL game after being an OHL star with the Sarnia Sting from 2010-2012. In his junior career he finished with 170 points in 107 games. He also spent time in the KHL with his hometown team, the\u00a0Nizhnekamsk Neftekhimik during the 2012-2013 NHL lockout, recording 18 points in 22 games.<\/p>\n<p>Nail Yakupov&#8217;s last contract was a two-year deal worth $5 million, $2.5 million per year, signed by the Edmonton Oilers on April 13th, 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo via Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winger Nail Yakupov has signed a one-year deal with the Colorado Avalanche. The deal is worth $875,000 next season. Yakupov became an unrestricted free agent this off-season when the St. Louis Blues did not extend a qualifying offer to him. The Russian right winger spent last season with the Blues, playing 40 games, tallying three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1840,"featured_media":11781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,28],"tags":[138,517,191,1901,635,39,1900],"class_list":["post-12176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-avalanche","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-khl","tag-nail-yakupov","tag-nizhnekamsk-neftekhimik","tag-sarnia-sting","tag-st-louis-blues","tag-zach-pochiro"],"modified_by":"Colton Praill","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}