Klim Kostin might be the one to watch this pre-season

Klim Kostin as three goals in three games.

Granted, two of those games were in Traverse City, where the Blues’ prospects finished sixth. But the third and most recent one was on Monday night during the Blues’ first pre-season game against the Dallas Stars. It wasn’t against a typical pre-season prospect goalie, either. It was against the starter, Ben Bishop. The last time the Blues saw Bishop, he was giving a masterful performance against his hometown team. If you were listening to the game on ESPN 101 FM, you heard the one timer that came off of an Ivan Barbashev pass.

Sadly, because it’s preseason and no one thinks about recording the in-arena video feed for the websites, no one saw the damned thing.

Kostin finished the game with a goal, a hit, and 16:56 of ice time (1:16 on the power play). Only Sammy Blais, Oskar Sundqvist, and (barely) Jordan Nolan were on the receiving end of more ice time among the forwards.

Kostin is not playing tonight in Washington, so fans won’t be able to see if how he played against the Stars would continue along the same path against fellow Russian Alexander Ovechkin. Kostin finished a 66 game stint with the San Antonio Rampage with ten goals and room for growth. It will be interesting to see if he’ll grow enough this pre-season to hang around once the puck drops on October 2nd.