Green Bay Gamblers bring back Nikita Fedotov for 2026-27 season

Green Bay locked in another key piece of its blue line by signing defenseman Nikita Fedotov to a standard player agreement for the 2026-27 USHL season. The move keeps a familiar, 18-year-old defender in the fold as the Gamblers keep shaping a roster built to defend the momentum of a strong 2025-26 campaign.

Fedotov’s return matters because Green Bay is not bringing back a project so much as a player who already proved he can handle real minutes in Tier I junior hockey. Listed on the club roster as No. 18, the Khabarovsk, Russia, native is a 6-foot-1, 190-pound defenseman who played 56 games in his first full USHL regular season last year, scoring one goal and finishing with eight points and a plus-9 rating. After arriving as an undrafted free agent in October 2024, he moved quickly into the Gamblers’ defensive core and gave the team a steady right-side option.

That growth path has been a fast one. Before becoming a full-time USHL regular, Fedotov spent the 2024-25 season with the New Jersey Rockets 16U team, where he put up 11 goals and 42 points in 68 games. He also appeared in 11 USHL games for Green Bay that spring, including playoff action, and had earlier development time in Russia with Yunost Yekaterinburg’s U16 and U17 programs, producing eight goals and 45 points in 48 games during the 2023-24 season.

The Gamblers are entering this next phase with real organizational momentum. Green Bay was named the USHL Organization of the Year for the 2025-26 season, the third time in franchise history it has won the award, and finished third in the Eastern Conference with a 38-18-4-2 record. The 38 wins were the most the program has posted since the 2011-12 season, a backdrop that makes keeping a player like Fedotov even more important for continuity on the back end.

His stock also rose outside Green Bay. The Gamblers included Fedotov among the players named to the NHL Central Scouting Bureau’s preliminary Players to Watch list for the 2026 NHL Draft, another sign that his second USHL season will carry real weight. Green Bay has also added Logan Cotter and Ben Slavick on tender agreements, a clear sign that the offseason has already been about preserving structure while adding young talent around it. Fedotov’s return gives the Gamblers one more established piece on defense, and a chance to open 2026-27 with a back end that already knows the standard.