By: 369 Sports & Entertainment
Every player who hears his name called on draft day has a story that starts long before scouts ever noticed him. For Mikhail Cherepanov, that story belongs as much to his parents as it does to him: a childhood that pointed toward hockey almost by accident, a decision to send their son across the world, and a two a.m. phone call that changed the shape of their family’s life.
Long before the Dallas Stars took notice, Mikhail was the kind of kid teachers called home about. His mother remembers a boy who was constantly in motion, cheerful, impossible to miss in a room, active enough that she found herself talking to his daycare teachers about his behavior a couple of times a week without fail. It is the kind of memory that, in hindsight, reads like foreshadowing. The energy that got him sent to the corner of a kindergarten classroom is the same energy that now shows up on the score sheet.
Hockey did not enter the Cherepanov household as a dream. It arrived as medical advice. Mikhail had a pronounced gait issue as a young child, and it was an orthopedist, not a coach, who first pointed the family toward the ice, telling them he needed to build the habit of placing his feet properly and that the family should choose between hockey and skiing. It became clear quickly which one had won.
The choice to send a teenager from Yekaterinburg to play hockey in the United States was not made lightly, and it was not made for hockey alone. For the Cherepanovs, it was two ambitions folded into one move.
It was really a combination of two main goals: getting an international education and continuing to play hockey. By that point, it was already obvious that hockey was Misha’s main priority and motivation in everything, even in his schoolwork. – Mikhail’s mother
Asked what worried her most about the move, hockey aside, her answer was almost surprised at itself.
Honestly, there weren’t real worries. There were only early arguments about what mattered more, hockey or everything else. Everything else lost. – Mikhail’s mother
Nothing captures the distance between Yekaterinburg and the NHL Draft quite like the story of the night itself. The family was gathered at their dacha outside the city, friends around, watching as other prospects heard their names called. Mikhail’s mother, tired from the wait, had gone to bed.
We were all out at the dacha; we had friends over, and of course we were watching, cheering for the guys who got picked. I went to sleep at some point, honestly. Then I woke up to Misha’s dad shouting, and for a second I genuinely thought someone had broken into the house. I jumped up and heard Pasha yelling that Misha had been picked. We both ran to find him, and he’d apparently dozed off in front of the TV. We jumped on him just as his phone started ringing. It was around two in the morning, and we didn’t actually fall asleep until it started getting light out. That much adrenaline, that many phone calls. – Mikhail’s mother
Her account of the moment, and her son’s, could not have looked more different from the outside. She was mostly worried about her husband’s health, she admits, since he was celebrating louder than she had ever seen him celebrate. Mikhail, meanwhile, was already on the phone, already talking to people, already figuring out next steps. It is a small detail that says a great deal: while his parents were still absorbing the moment, he had already moved on to the next one.
What the family does not get, in exchange for the opportunity they helped build, is the everyday texture of their son’s life: the practices, the bad days, the small wins that never make a headline. They watch the games even when they land at three, four, five in the morning, and Mikhail’s mother has made a habit of demanding photos from him, which she calls probably the hardest part. He is lucky with the people around him, she says; his billet families are wonderful, sending her photos and updates of their own. The connection, if anything, has grown since he left. Video calls have become a daily fixture rather than an occasional check-in, and she can tell when he is missing home before he says so.
If he ever stops calling, he knows exactly how angry his mother will be. – Mikhail’s mother
Asked what they wanted people to understand about what a family gives up to get a player to this point, Mikhail’s parents answered separately, and their answers complete each other.
Believe in your child, and don’t get in the coach’s way. But always be in his corner, and always support him. – Mikhail’s father
I spent years trying to convince him that school mattered more, and I never once stood in the way of him chasing what he loved. Not many people get to spend their life doing the thing they’re truly passionate about. Let Misha be one of them. – Mikhail’s mother
With the CHL Import Draft ahead and a commitment to Lake Superior State still two years out, his mother is reluctant to name specific hopes, careful not to tempt fate on a story still being written. What she has always wanted for him, she says, is an international education, real friendships with people from all kinds of backgrounds, and the chance to keep developing in the thing he has chosen as his life’s work. It is a fitting note to end on. For a family that has spent years balancing two ambitions at once, the hope for what comes next is not a title or a number. It is simply that their son keeps becoming more of who he already is.
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Player information: Mikhail Cherepanov on Elite Prospects
