Meet 2027 NHL Draft prospect Dima Zhilkin, who found his game and a home in Saginaw (The Athletic)
Kevin Smiley can still remember the first day he opened his doors to a billet.
It was the day of the national championship in college football, Jan. 7, 2013. John Llewelyn, a former billet of the Spirit who worked at the hospital with his wife, Kristen (an interventional radiologist), had brought defenseman Jesse Graham by because he needed a place to stay.
At the time, the Smileys had young kids, and so Kevin had told him, “Well, bring Jesse over and we’ll meet him and see if he wants to be in our house and if it’s a good fit.”
When he showed up, Kevin was plowing snow in their driveway. When Graham hopped out of Llewelyn’s car with a duffel bag, he remembers thinking, “Well, it’s going to be awkward if we say no.”
After tucking his kids to bed at halftime, suddenly he was sitting next to a stranger on his couch.
When Smiley tells that story today, he smiles ear to ear when he says that “by the next day, Jesse was a part of our family.”
Until that moment, the Smileys were always a soccer family. Though they have a pond in their backyard in Saginaw’s Chestnut Grove neighborhood, they rarely skated on it.
These days, though, they’re a hockey family. [Dima] Zhilkin is their newest billet son, Smiley is retired, and they don’t miss a game.
They’ll often even go to road games in Flint, Sault Ste. Marie and Windsor (where Zhilkin’s parents, Anna and Boris, now live), too. They took two breaks from billeting when their two boys were in their senior years of high school but once they left home, Spirit assistant general manager Brian Prout, who oversees their billet program, asked them if they’d take Zhilkin in during their 2024 Memorial Cup run for a few weeks after the league permitted Zhilkin to be around the team immediately after they drafted him.
Those few weeks have turned into two seasons (it’ll be three when Zhilkin returns for his draft year next year instead of going the college route). When the Spirit asked the Smileys if he could come back for his rookie season a year ago, Kristen told them, “You gave us a puppy for a few weeks and then said, ‘Now he’s gone.’ Absolutely.”
Sitting in his living room with their golden doodle Zoey in his lap ahead of a three-in-three weekend slate of games, Smiley, who used to substitute teach and always cherished when kids would scream to their friends “We’ve got Mr. Smiley today!” when he’d show up, says billeting Zhilkin has given him that feeling back.
More than a decade after having Graham stay with them, they attended his wedding and gifted him his jersey from the outdoor game he played in with Saginaw. On Mother’s Day, Graham’s text to Kristen often beats her own kids’. In their basement, they’ve got framed photos and memorabilia from all of their former players — from Graham to NHL Draft picks like Nick Moutrey, Jake Paterson and Markus Niemelainen. It was a hard Christmas the year that Moutrey and Paterson were traded days apart. Before Paterson left, he insisted on dropping by both of the kids’ schools to give them hugs goodbye.
They’re not looking forward to that eventual goodbye with Zhilkin and say they’ve developed a particularly special relationship with him.
Last season, before Zhilkin had even played his first game with the Spirit, the Smileys helped the then-15-year-old through his first injury after he took a knee to his quad in an exhibition game, and it turned into a hematoma.
More time spent away during the injury helped bring him even closer to the Smileys. Zhilkin talks about their place as his second home now, and talks fondly of getting them out onto the pond last winter.
“You don’t know what you’re expecting with a billet, especially coming into your first year as a 15- and 16-year-old. It’s tough moving away from family. But they’ve welcomed me so easily, and everything just clicked. I’m super happy to be here,” Zhilkin said.
They’ll have movie nights, ping pong matches and play pool in the basement. The night before The Athletic’s visit, they were playing cards together. A few nights before that, when Zhilkin turned 17, his mom, dad and sister came over, and Smiley asked him what he liked to have for dessert on his birthday. He told him pancho, a Russian cake that he gets from a bakery whenever he’s home. (Zhilkin moved to Canada from Russia when he was 8, two and a half years after his mom, sister and older brother, Danny, a prospect of the Winnipeg Jets, did, while he and his dad awaited their visas.)
So Smiley made him pancho, and the family ate it all.
When they were done, Anna told her son’s billet dad, “This is exactly what it tastes like.”
“Well, you made my heart feel good,” Smiley answered.
He has also taught himself how to make borscht, a Russian stew, and pelmeni, a kind of dumpling.
Smiley talks about Boris, who still speaks very little English and communicates primarily using his phone as his translator, as “just so thankful.”
“Oh, Kevin, you my friend,” Boris will say to Smiley whenever he sees him.
Smiley laughs about a game during Zhilkin’s rookie season when Boris looked back down at a stream of one of Danny’s games on his phone while Zhilkin was in the middle of a fight, numb to that competitiveness that everyone else now sees. Though Boris and Anna didn’t attend the game against Erie, instead making the trip to see Danny play in Grand Rapids with the Manitoba Moose, they were in Windsor for the tail end of their three-in-three and having them a couple of hours away has been big for Zhilkin.
“He showed me his phone after the Memorial Cup, and it said ‘You’re the first person I’ve ever entrusted my son to,’” Smiley said.