The KHL’s newest club, the Shanghai Dragons, have continued their streak of signing former North American pros. They announced on Sunday that they’ve signed forwards Alexander Burmistrov and Borna Rendulic, as well as defenseman Adam Clendening. The three bring a combined 453 games of NHL experience to the Chinese squad.
The large bulk of those NHL appearances belong to Burmistrov. He was once a star prospect in the NHL, and was drafted eighth-overall in the 2010 NHL Draft by the Atlanta Thrashers. He turned pro in the very next season, and scored 20 points in 74 games as an NHL rookie. Unfortunately, Burmistrov never improved from that mark. He spent much of the 2010’s trying and failing to work out of a bottom-six role in the NHL. His effort to break out took him across tenures with the Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets, Arizona Coyotes, and Vancouver Canucks. It also saw Burmistrov return to the KHL for two years between 2013 and 2015, where he scored a combined 63 points in 107 games.
Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Burmistrov made the decision to move to the KHL full-time at the end of the 2017-18 season. It proved to be an immediately fruitful decision, as he moved just in time to play in the final 27 games of Kazan Ak-Bars’ 2018 Gagarian Cup win. He has continued in Russia’s top league ever since, but again found himself in the position of frequent moves in search of a breakout year. He’s played for four different KHL clubs over the last eight seasons, but hasn’t once scored more than 20 points in a single regular season. His scoring in 2013-14 and 2014-15 stand as Burmistrov’s career-high – and he’ll now move to yet another team in search of those former marks.
Joining Burmistrov will be North American veteran Clendening, who will stick with the Kunlun/Shanghai organization through their summer rebrand. He appeared in 61 games with the Red Stars last season and finished the year with 22 points and 65 penalty minutes. It was just his second season overseas, after spending the 2023-24 campaign with Ilves Tampere of Finland’s Liiga. Before that, Clendening was a set-and-forget feature of the AHL, filling high-minute roles through seasons with seven different clubs. He was a hard-hitting, two-way defender capable of stepping into most roles. That ability earned Clendening 318 points in 512 games, and 10 seasons, in the AHL. He also scored 24 points in 90 NHL games, often serving as an injury fill-in. His only extended run in the NHL came in 2016-17, when he scored 11 points in 31 games with the New York Rangers.
Rounding out the additions is Rendulic, who played just 15 games in the NHL between 2014 and 2017. The bulk of those appearances – 14, to be exact – came with the Colorado Avalanche, who signed Rendulic as an undrafted free-agent in 2014. He had grown through the ranks of Finland’s Liiga, but struggled to maintain his snappy offense in North America. He posted an encouraging 61 points in 137 AHL games between 2015 and 2017, before opting to return to the Liiga in 2017-18. A return to Europe meant a return to scoring for Rendulic, kicking off what has become a journeyman career across the continent. He has played in Finland, Russia, Germany, and Sweden since 2017. He’s managed multiple impressive seasons along the way – including scoring 41 points in 56 DEL games in 2022-23, and 27 points in 51 games with the KHL’s SKA St. Petersburg in 2023-24. Now, Rendulic will add one more country to his list, and join China’s newly-minted KHL squad.
