It was around 2019 when NHL agent Dan Milstein first heard of Artyom Levshunov, then a 13-year-old defenseman playing in complete obscurity in Belarus’ youth leagues.
“My Belarusian scouts contacted me saying, ‘You need to see this kid,'” Milstein said. “I watched him, and we instantly knew he was a very special player.”
Five years later, Levshunov has become one of the best and most well-known prospects in the sport. He’s the first Belarusian ever to be a top-eight pick in the NHL draft — and, at No. 2 overall, it wasn’t close. He now headlines the Blackhawks‘ flush pipeline and is expected to be the cornerstone of their future defense.
Through that whirlwind journey, he hasn’t lost an iota of the boyish charm and ceaseless work ethic that make him such a fascinating individual. And it’s a good thing he hasn’t, because even more work will be required to reach his lofty ceiling.
Humble beginnings
In summer 2022, after traveling to the United States for the first time, Levshunov arrived at Milstein’s house in Florida with a bag of clothes and nothing else.
“I came like a simple Belarusian guy,” Levshunov said.
Their first step was to go shopping. Milstein told him, “Listen, we’ll get you four shirts and four ties.”
Until then, Levshunov and hockey’s fashionable side were complete strangers. In his hometown of Zhlobin, Belarus — an industrial riverside village of about 77,000 in the southeastern quadrant of the country — that was not the reality.
His primary mode of transportation was a bicycle; “it’s faster and it’s simple,” he explained. His favorite pastime was fishing, which he still unequivocally loves. He enjoyed movies, too, but mainly Russian sports films with a few American flicks (like the original “Top Gun”) sprinkled in.
He started playing hockey around age 4 after being inspired by his older brother, Kirill, who went on to enjoy a brief pro career and is now a coach. He was motivated to improve by watching the local pro team, Metallurg Zhlobin, whose games he often attended with his grandmother, Tatsiana.
By 2020, he was invited to join Belarus’ national under-17 team as a 15-year-old. Their coach, Andrei Mikhalyov, quickly noticed his creativity despite his then-“modest” demeanor.
“During his time in the youth-team program, Levshunov was much calmer in daily life and less talkative with the media,” Mikhalyov wrote via a translator. “But hitting the ice, Artyom would loosen up, get hyped and could face opponents in a rough manner. Undoubtedly, the guy matured during his time on the youth team. He kept getting better every year.”
While playing for the under-18 team in 2021-22, Levshunov’s dad — who initially taught him to skate — died due to heart complications from COVID-19. Shortly thereafter, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted the Canadian junior leagues — where he had dreamed of playing — to ban Russian and Belarusian players.
It was a difficult time, but Levshunov still managed to lead all defensemen in the Belarusian league with 80 points in 59 total games. That’s when Milstein called Mike Leone, the new coach and general manager of the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers, to discuss the possibility of Levshunov playing American junior hockey.
“Dan gave us the name, but no one really knew about Arty,” Leone said. “I watched him on video playing against Russia’s [under]-20 team in a summer tournament — he was 16 years old at the time — and he was really good.”
Leone decided to pick Levshunov in the eighth round of the USHL’s Phase II draft, which is about as anonymous as it gets. Then Levshunov received a visa and flew to Green Bay for a brief camp (before going to Florida), and Leone realized he had discovered a diamond.
“The first time he stepped on the ice, you could see the talent, the skill set, the size and the skating,” he said.
‘Everything was new’
Levshunov’s life soon changed rapidly. Milstein took him to Game 4 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final in Tampa, where they witnessed Nazem Kadri’s dramatic overtime winner for the Avalanche. He met Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev in the parking lot afterward, and took a boat trip with then-Flames defenseman Nikita Zadorov a couple days later.
When he moved full-time to Green Bay, his first outing was a fishing trip, naturally. His second was a Packers game attended by more people than the population of his hometown.
His first visits to American chain restaurants like Chipotle, P.F. Chang’s and Panda Express were equally mind-boggling. Leone said he ate like a “human garbage disposal.”
“Everything was new and different for me than it was in Belarus,” Levshunov said. “The coach was different. The language was different. The hockey is a little bit different. People are a little bit different. America is big, you know?”
“Everything was new and different for me than it was in Belarus. The coach was different. The language was different. The hockey is a little bit different. People are a little bit different. America is big, you know?”
At the time, he knew barely any English. Leone matched him with the billet family that also housed Gamblers forward Misha Danylov, a Ukrainian who spoke Russian and could help him out. Leone then reached out to Lawrence University in nearby Appleton and arranged for a Russian professor to become his slightly overqualified English tutor.
“Honestly, it was [more about] trying to make him feel like he was family,” Leone said. “It wasn’t really about hockey.
“There’s a lot of long bus trips in the USHL, and you really got to see his personality. He really cares about people. My family was never in town…so he would always ask how they were. He would ask about where we were going or something he saw on the side of the road — a sign, anything. He always wanted to know. His teammates loved him. When you’re around Arty, you gravitate toward him.”
Said Levshunov: “I just tried to have conversations. That’s how I tried to learn more and more English.”
Atypical student
By the midpoint of the Gamblers’ 2022-23 season, it was clear Levshunov would need even tougher competition in 2023-24. He finished the year with 42 points in 63 games, the most by an under-18 defenseman in USHL history.
But his still-limited English fluency posed one of several roadblocks to the U.S. college route.
“He was resisting the college idea for the longest time because, in Belarus and Russia, they don’t have competitive college hockey,” Milstein said. “In June, he finally came to the realization himself.”
At that point, not many elite programs still had scholarships available, Milstein added, and one of the few that did — Michigan — wanted to keep it open in case Blue Jackets forward Adam Fantilli decided to return to school.
Levshunov eventually chose their rival, Michigan State, after a Zoom call with coach Adam Nightingale, who had kept an eye on him since seeing his first USHL games at the 2022 Fall Classic in Pittsburgh. As it turns out, that was the first place Hawks scouting director Mike Doneghey saw him play, too.
An intense regimen of ESL classes during summer 2023 — eight hours’ worth per day — prepared Levshunov for the academic aspect of college, and he ended up getting good grades. Meanwhile, the independence he gained biking around Zhlobin paid off when it came to navigating Michigan State.
“The first day, I walked him to his class, [because] it’s a pretty big campus and I wasn’t sure if he knew where was going,” Nightingale said. “The next day, he came to the rink and had breakfast, and I was going to walk him again. He said, ‘No, Coach, I’ve got it.’ It didn’t take him long.”
‘Different speed’
Levshunov’s story is compelling, but it wouldn’t mean much from an NHL standpoint if he wasn’t an exceptional hockey player.
Fortunately, he is. That fact has been evident to everyone who has watched or coached him along his journey. Hawks GM Kyle Davidson, shortly after drafting him, called him the “total package.”
Said Leone: “His hockey sense is off the charts, [as is] his ability to see the game. A lot of times, it’s almost like he’s playing the game at a different speed than everyone else, [considering] his ability to slow the game down and process it and make plays. He plays at his own pace; he’s not a hectic player.”
Said Nightingale: “He’s such a great skater…and he has natural poise. Some guys can make really good short passes but never see anything down the ice; he can see both. And then up top, his ability to get pucks through [is excellent]. You don’t see a ton of young players have that knack.”
Levshunov tallied 35 points in 38 games in 2023-24, helping the Spartans win their first-ever Big Ten championship. He led the team in ice time and trailed Lightning forward prospect Isaac Howard by just one point for the team scoring lead.
Defensively, he improved significantly at defending rushes, learning how to use his elite skating to take away time and space. Part of the adjustment came from better understanding the dynamics of time and space in North American hockey, which is tighter than on European-sized rinks.
A legacy already
Levshunov’s development into Michigan State’s first top-10 NHL draft pick since 1994 will be a significant feather in Nightingale’s cap on the recruiting trail moving forward.
“One of the things we wanted to make sure we did is recruit high-end players and move them on to the NHL,” Nightingale said. “Now you have a guy that recruits can really look at and say, ‘Hey, Arty played there. He had a big impact and improved at Michigan State.’ When you’re talking about recruiting, there’s momentum, and we’ll definitely get some off of him.”
Back home in Belarus, the legacy he leaves behind might be even greater.
The nation has already established some significant positive momentum in terms of developing NHL prospects. They’ve had 18 players drafted over the last seven years (2018-2024), compared to 11 players drafted during the previous 18 years (2000-2017).
But Levshunov marks their first first-round selection since Andrei Kostitsyn in 2003 — and he’s more than a typical first-rounder, at that.
“This story inspires many kids,” Mikhalyov wrote. “Artyom’s story needs to be told to all our young ice hockey players, so that they see a guiding star and understand that even an ordinary Belarusian guy can be drafted under a high number.”
Turning pro
Levshunov’s next step is pro hockey. After signing his entry-level contract with the Hawks earlier this month, he will compete for an NHL spot in training camp in September but will likely start the regular season in the AHL with Rockford.
That decision was not made brashly; Levshunov had numerous discussions after the draft before finally arriving at it. Milstein said he was ultimately wooed by “playing against more mature guys and, most importantly, playing more games,” referencing the contrast between a 72-game AHL season and a 38-game NCAA season.
Nightingale said he assumed last summer he would only have Levshunov for one season, so he never pressured him to return and fully supported the decision he made.
“Some guys come back to college because they haven’t got man-strength yet…and that’s not the case with Arty,” he added.
Indeed, the legends surrounding Levshunov’s dedication to strength training will linger for a while everywhere he has been. He’s an animal in the gym, and it’s evident in his muscularity. His official height and weight of 6-2, 205 pounds belies how large and hulking he appears in person.
His Michigan State teammates were blown away by his off-ice training routine, and they weren’t the first to be. The Green Bay coaching staff often had similar reactions when they found Levshunov still in the gym at midnight, hours after a game ended.
So did the Belarusian national team staff, who would leave the rink to get dinner only to pass Levshunov walking in the opposite direction, heading back to the gym. Mikhalyov wrote — in a telling case of translation incongruity — that Levshunov was “constantly destroying himself.”
The Hawks believe he can get stronger, too. They think his relative lack of time spent training in North America compared to other top prospects means he’s currently “behind the curve” in a good way. In other words, he has more room to grow, both literally and figuratively.
“Seeing him in workout gear, you see the frame, but you still see the potential to fill out that frame and build muscle,” assistant GM Mark Eaton said.
One thing that probably won’t change, though, is his playful personality — and that’s a blessing for all who will befriend him in Chicago during the years ahead.
The Hawks already knew him well after scouting him closely all year long, but when they took him out to dinner at a Buffalo steakhouse during the scouting combine in June, they grasped just how beloved he was by NHL clubs who knew they weren’t picking high enough to have a shot. Nothing could’ve better demonstrated his charm.
“Other teams were there with other players, and they’re coming by and hitting him on the back and [telling him] ‘good luck’ and everything else,” Doneghey said with amazement.
It’s that unique combination of authenticity, talent and dedication that makes Levshunov such a unicorn among NHL prospects and makes the Hawks so excited about his future. He smiles hard and grinds harder.
“We would always ask him [in the gym at midnight], ‘Are you OK?'” Leone said. “He would say, ‘Yep. Just work, coach. I just have to work.’ And that’s Arty.”