Evan Rawal
If you’re like me, you probably looked the training camp roster for the Colorado Avalanche and had the same thought.
I knew the name, I just hadn’t heard it in a long, long time.
There’s a reason why.
Once a highly touted prospect who led the the CHL in scoring back during the 2009-10 season, Kozun never panned out in the NHL. After a brief stint in Toronto that included 20 NHL games, he left North America in 2015.
That’s right, he’s been gone for 8 years.
Now, in 2023, he’s back, and he’s a completely different person. At 33 and having spent most of the last 8 years playing in Russia, he’s learned a lot about himself, the world, and different cultures. He’s older, wiser, and at peace with where he is in life, focusing on the present.
This week, his focus is training camp with the Avalanche, where he’s trying to earn a contract.
Wouldn’t that be something?
Kozun currently has a spot in the corner of the Avalanche locker room at Family Sports, sandwiched between Andrew Cogliano and Logan O’Connor’s stalls. When I went up to speak to him, he was talking to one of the trainers on the Avalanche, talking about his experiences overseas. He shared those same details with me, and the incredible perspective he has come to camp with.
He told me the Avalanche had interest in him for years, but he didn’t think it was the right situation for him at the time. This year, he felt ready.
“Now, I feel comfortable in the years that I put in there,” Kozun said. “And I figured, why not come over here and give it another chance? I don’t feel like there’s any pressure or anything to lose. I believe in myself as a player, and really just trying to come here, work hard, and show what I can do.”
I’ve heard stories about the KHL. At this point, everyone has heard stories about the KHL. Last season, Kozun was the Captain for Dinamo Minsk, and you don’t stay somewhere for 8 years if you aren’t having a good time.
“There’s good days and bad days, no matter where you are,” he said. “Obviously, the political stuff that’s going on isn’t ideal for anybody involved, but I met a lot of good people over there. I got treated really well, for the most part, so I don’t really want to complain too much. For the most part, it provided me a life for myself and for my family and I’m grateful for that.”
If you look at the roster of Dinamo Minsk last year, it’s mostly Russians, as you’d expect. He had some fellow Canadians on the roster, like our old friend Mark Barberio, but you’re talking about a roster made up of players born in a very different part of the world.
How difficult is it to be Captain of a team made up of Russians?
“It’s hard,” Kozun said. “I hope they respected me a little bit for all the years that I had spent there. I feel like my style of play hopefully leads by example. When you’re over there, there’s a whole lot of factors that go into things and it’s not just hockey anymore, and I understood that. My coach was Canadian, so he tried to help me as much as possible, but there’s some trials and tribulations, for sure.”
Russia did indeed give Kozun a lot. For one, he met his wife there, and that helped him learn the Russian language a little bit. In the Avalanche locker room, he doesn’t sit too far from Valeri Nichushkin and Alexandar Georgiev, but says he can overhear them understands what they’re saying when they decide to speak in Russian. Not that he wants them to know, though.
Before coming to the team, he did have familiarity with someone in the organization – Nikolai Kovalenko. The two were teammates for Lokomotiv for a season back when Kovalenko was a “young buck,” according to Kozun.
“He’s never lacked confidence,” he said of the Avalanche prospect. “I think he’s eager to come over at some point, but he seems to be getting better every year.”
Although Kozun could speak the language, it wasn’t always easy to connect with Russian players, and it’s one of the things he missed about being in North America.
“That’s one thing that I miss, a lot of the teammates that I played with, I never really got to know them as people because it was difficult,” he said. “It’s hard to make those relationships with those guys because of that. In terms of the Russian guys, I know guys who are nice to me, but I can’t really get a sense of what they were actually like, or their hobbies or interests or anything like that.”
That experience, however, is what has given him a different perspective on life. He looks at the foreign players that come to North America at such a young age in a different light these days.
“I have a newfound respect for those guys that come over here at a young age,” Kozun said. “I never really understood that when I was over here. Now I go over there, and it’s got to be tough for them to come over here. Like, we get help when we go over there! For them to come here, not knowing the language, to me, that would be really hard. I really respect those guys for that.”
For now, Kozun isn’t thinking too much about the future. He’s focused on the present. I asked him if he had considered playing in the AHL if he doesn’t make the Avalanche, but he hasn’t even thought about it. He doesn’t want to get too far ahead of himself. Right now, he’s staying in the moment.
Could he have done that a decade ago?
“I feel like a different player now, to be honest,” he told me. “I’ve done a lot of stuff. I’ve been overseas, I’ve played in the Olympics. The KHL is a really good league, there’s some really good players that play there. Being captain of a team and learning different cultures and everything else, it changes you as a person, for sure.”
So for now, he’s here, in the present. And when you hear him speak, it sounds like he’s at peace with the path he has taken to get here.
“I just feel like, at my age, I don’t feel like I have anything to lose,” Kozun said. “Hockey has been really good to me. I want to keep playing for as long as I possibly can, but at the same time, I’m grateful for what has been given to me, and I just want to show what I can show. If it works out for me, awesome. And if it doesn’t, then it’s time to go somewhere else.”