Don't let the blue and orange jerseys, the No. 97, or the highlight-reel goals fool you.
That's not Connor McDavid, that's Penguins 2021 seventh-round pick Kirill Tankov.
Tankov, 19, made his regular-season debut in the Russian VHL on Thursday. The VHL is the league one step below the KHL, and one step above the MHL, the junior league in which Tankov was scoring all of those highlight-reel goals that went viral after he was drafted.
Tankov centered SKA-Neva's third line in Thursday's game, and scored two goals in a 6-1 win over Bars Kazan in the season-opener.
Tankov scored this goal in the second period to put SKA-Neva up 4-0:
Tankov's second goal came midway through the third period, a power play goal off of the faceoff:
Tankov (wearing No. 64 in the following clips) scored three goals in the VHL preseason:
After Tankov was drafted this offseason, Penguins director of player personnel Chris Pryor said that the 6-foot-1, 181-pound forward shows "a lot of promise."
"He's a good size winger, he can play center," Pryor said. "He's got a good skillset, kind of long and lean. And as with the college kids, it's kind of conducive for for Kirill here, we can just leave them there and let them develop. There's no rush, just patience. We have a good eye over there with (Penguins Russian scout Alexander Khavanov). I think there's a lot of promise there, a lot of upside for Kirill."