Nikita Artamonov came into his draft-eligible campaign fairly under the radar. That quickly changed when he started his season playing top minutes with his KHL team, Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod.

He began his 2022-23 season with his youth club, Reaktor Nizhnekamsk, the team he had just broken into the year prior, playing five games as a 16-year-old. After another five matches with Reaktor, he was traded to the Torpedo system, with Andrei Tikhomirov heading to Nizhnekamsk.

He finished his year with 29 points in 41 games with Chaika and played just over two minutes in a game against CSKA Moskva for Torpedo. He went on to be one of Chaika’s most valuable players in the playoffs, as they won the Kharlamov Cup.

Artamonov joined up with Torpedo for their preseason games and stayed with the team for the