Ilya Solovyov didn’t hesitate for a moment.
On Jan. 31, during the third period of a 6-5 home win against the New York Rangers, Solovyov took a cross-checking penalty.
And he had a pretty good reason to do so.
Matt Rempe, a 6-foot-9, 261-pound aircraft carrier that is squeezed into a Rangers jersey and skates on that team’s fourth line, had just clobbered Penguins forward Connor Dewar with a blindside check away from the puck.
Solovyov, all 6-foot-3 and 208 pounds of him, took offense and mashed his stick into the port side of the ample Rempe’s hull, winding up with a minor infraction for cross checking.
Matt Rempe hits Connor Dewar
— RGF (@rgfray1) January 31, 2026
Ilya Solovyov cross checks Rempe#LetsGoPens #nyr pic.twitter.com/wP72O9bBpe
“He hit my teammate,” Solovyov said the next day in Cranberry. “In my opinion, it wasn’t a clean hit at all. That’s why I go and (stand up) for him. We’re teammates. One of my teammates got a dirty hit, (it’s) what I have to do. Am I just going to stay away? No questions about it.”
His coach didn’t question Solovyov’s actions.
“It was awesome,” Dan Muse said. “Great by him. He got right in there, no hesitation. I thought both guys should have gone to the box. That wasn’t the case. We’ll kill that penalty all day long. I’ll take that. It was great for him. He was right in there.”
Solovyov has largely fit right in well with the Penguins since he was acquired in a trade with the Colorado Avalanche on Jan. 20.
A healthy scratch for three games following the transaction, Solovyov has been a presence in the Penguins last five games before the ongoing Olympic break. Primarily deployed on the left side of the third pairing, Solovyov has registered three assists while averaging 13:50 of ice time per contest over that span.
— EN Videos (@ENVideos19) January 30, 2026
“He’s a hard player to play against,” Muse said. “At the net front, I thought he showed some good detail in some of the box-outs, just some little things there. … A good job defending.
“Coming as advertised.”
Trying to determine Solovyov’s billing as an NHLer hasn’t exactly been easy.
At least not for Solovyov, who has also skated for the Calgary Flames, along with the Avalanche and Penguins.
“I can’t tell you, honestly,” Solovyov said, when asked to describe his game. “Because in Calgary, I was one type of player. Then (in Colorado) I was another one. So, we’ll see what I’ll be in Pittsburgh.”
One way to definitively describe Solovyov (pronounced “soh-LOH-vee-ahv”) is as a long shot to reach the NHL.
He is a native of Belarus, a small country that was once part of the former Soviet Union and has only produced 22 NHLers all-time.
Of that group, three have skated for the Penguins, including Solovyov, who is quite familiar with the other two.
He is friends with Vladislav Kolyachonok, a defenseman who appeared in a handful of games for the Penguins last season. And, most profoundly, he was coached as a child by Konstantin Koltsov.
A first-round draft pick (No. 18 overall) in 1999, Koltsov played for the Penguins over parts of three seasons in the mid-2000s.
— EN Videos (@ENVideos19) March 19, 2024
Koltsov died at the age of 42 in 2024 as a result of an apparent suicide.
Solovyov speaks with reverence of the guidance he received from Koltsov and used the word “legends” to describe him and other Belarusians who have reached the NHL, such as Ruslan Salei, a defenseman who played in 917 NHL games between the late 1990s and early 2010s.
Like Koltsov, Salei died prematurely at the age of 36, as a result of a 2011 plane crash that killed all members of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, a team based in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
“When you start playing in Belarus, the biggest dream was to try to play in North America,” Solovyov said. “Because when I was growing up, on the TV in (Belarus), any news about the hockey, it’s taken from the NHL. How (are) our NHL players playing last night? The sports news is like ‘In the National Hockey League, Ruslan Salei, his Colorado Avalanche played. He’s playing 21 minutes, he got one point and raised his (plus/minus) to plus-2.’”
Getting to the NHL from Belarus isn’t exactly easy. For Solovyov, he had an option of skating in the KHL and hoping an NHL scout might see him.
Instead, he opted to come to North America and play at the junior level for the Saginaw (Mich.) Spirit of the Ontario Hockey League (which is part of the Canadian Hockey League, the governing body that oversees that country’s junior ranks).
“In the CHL, it’s one step away from (being drafted into) the NHL,” Solovyov said. “I understand in the CHL, there’s a lot of drafted guys by the NHL teams. When I have this decision, nobody had to tell me what to do. I already knew what I was doing.”
Solovyov’s decision might have been easy. But moving to another country and hemisphere and immersing himself in a different language and culture was another matter.
But much like his cross check to Rempe, Solovyov didn’t hesitate to meet the challenge, adapting to English, which he speaks with an easy confidence.
“The language, it took two months for me to learn it,” said Solovyov, who was born in Mogliev, a town near the border with Russia. “I know it a little bit because we (were taught) it in school. But there was no slang. Every language has it. It was kind of hard for me. Two months of walking around, I was quiet as possible probably. The (teammates) helped me.
“I have a notebook and (wrote) every word that I ever heard in the locker room and translated. That’s how I build up my (English). Those two months gave me more than 10 years in school, probably.”
Solovyov’s lone season with Saginaw was good, to a point. A left-handed shot, he posted 40 points (seven goals, 33 assists) in 53 games and helped Saginaw finish the campaign in first place of the OHL’s West Division.
The way it finished wasn’t ideal, however. The pandemic halted all walks of life around the world in March of 2020, including the remainder OHL’s 2019-20 season, which was canceled.
Despite that, Solovyov had accomplished enough with Saginaw for the Calgary Flames to select him as a ripe 19-year-old in the seventh round (No. 205 overall) of the NHL Draft.
He suggests his decision to join Saginaw led to NHL scouts discovering him in a way that otherwise would not have happened had he stayed in Belarus. Even the Penguins, under former general manager Jim Rutherford, scouted Solovyov leading up to the draft.
“In Saginaw, there was a lot of NHL teams (that) talked with me,” Solovyov said. “Pittsburgh was one of the first ones. Pittsburgh, Calgary. It was four or five teams that talked to me.”
After spending the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season with Dinamo Minsk in the KHL, Solovyov made his professional debut on this continent with the Flames’ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, the Stockton Heat, in 2021-22.
For the entire 2022-23 campaign, Solovyov played for the Flames’ new AHL affiliate, the Calgary Wranglers, then broke through to the NHL level in 2023-24, skating in 10 games and posting three assists with the Flames.
After the 2024-25 season, Solovyov only had 15 games over two seasons on his NHL resume and has reached something of a professional crossroads. Having accumulated enough service time as a professional, he required exposure to waivers for a regular assignment to a minor league affiliate.
A few days before the start of the current season, the Flames placed Solovyov on waivers for that purpose, only to lose him to the Avalanche on Oct. 3.
With the Avalanche, Solovyov got into the lineup a bit more often, appearing in 16 games. He even scored his first career goal during a home win against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Oct. 10.
— EN Videos (@ENVideos19) January 20, 2026
But healthy scratches were far more common for him. In total, he was scratched for 29 games with the Avalanche, including a stretch of 24 consecutive games between Nov. 4 and Jan. 3.
(Note: That span includes a two-week conditioning assignment to the Colorado Eagles of the AHL. Conditioning assignments are not subject to waivers.)
In mid-January, he was dealt to the Penguins in exchange for forward Valtteri Puustinen and a seventh-round draft pick in 2026.
What’s it like being on the move so often?
“It’s pretty hard,” Solovyov said. “Not for me, but for my family, it’s pretty hard. They spend (many) months in Calgary waiting until I’m settled down. Then, in Colorado, they came in November. Then, after two months, we got a trade (to the Penguins). It’s more not about me, it’s more about them, honestly. It’s pretty hard for them. Right now, they’re here. They should be fine.”
Solovyov, whose family includes wife, Vlada, and son, Saveliy, has found something of a parental figure in Pittsburgh in Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin, a Russian.
“Me and (Russian forward Egor Chinakhov), he is like our father here,” Solovyov said. “Tries to teach us everything. It’s good. When you have Russians here — I’m from Belarus but we speak all the same language — every time it’s good when you have a group of guys who speak with you in your own language and you can have some fun. It’s helped me a lot.
“Because when I was in Saginaw, I didn’t have any guys who spoke Russian. That’s why I tried to learn (English) because I didn’t want to walk alone all season. That’s why I tried to figure it out as quick as possible.”
Solovyov seems to be figuring things out at an accelerated pace with the Penguins. He has racked up a few points, thrown some hits and quickly become popular with teammates.
“He has a very active stick,” said Ryan Shea, who has occasionally served as Solovyov’s defensive partner. “He has an absolute bomb of a shot. That’s nice to see, whether it’s a one-timer or a snap shot. … When you’ve got a bigger guy like that and it looks like he’s going to be physical and remove (opponents) in the corner, guys like me like that because we can (claim) the puck and get moving.”
Things appear to be moving in the right direction for Solovyov as a member of the Penguins.
“The coaches, the general manager talked to me a lot,” Solovyov said. “Try to make it so easy for me. We’re all humans. It’s a new locker room, new (teammates), new people around, coaches, system, everything. They try to make it easy as possible to put me in.
“Maybe they’ll let me play more than I was (with other teams). Maybe I’ll be a good (defenseman) for this team.”
