Я не злой,я добрый pic.twitter.com/aORjRgQwKi

— Evgeny Kuznetsov (@Kuzya92) 23 января 2014

Translation: I’m not evil, I’m good!

A day after revealing his plans to come to America, future Washington Capitals forward (that feels good to write) Evgeny Kuznetsov played his first game in a month. Kuzya had been out with a left leg injury that required surgery in Germany. While Kuznetsov was wearing knee wrap on the plane yesterday, he felt good enough to play in the opening game of the most difficult road trip of the year for any KHL team. Traktor is heading to Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok — aka the middle of nowhere.

Kuznetsov started his first game back on the third line against Sibir Novosibirsk, but he ended up leading the team’s forwards in ice time with 19:13. He also recorded an assist on a goal by Stanislav Chistov. Traktor lost in overtime 3-2. They are now ahead of Avangard Omsk for eighth place in the East by one point.

Here’s the assist. Kuznetsov rushes the puck out of his own zone before feeding a cross-ice pass to Alexei Zavarukhin before Chistov taps it in.