Radulov Signing with KHL Club Puts New Transfer Deal to Test

BOULDER, Colorado -- The NHL, the NHL Players Association, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the seven top hockey leagues in Europe reached a tentative peace over player contracts at a meeting July 10 in Zurich, agreeing in principle to a new transfer regime for the sport.

Though no formal transfer agreement was signed, all the leagues, including those from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Switzerland, and the newly-formed, Russian-based Continental Hockey League (KHL), agreed not to sign players currently under contract in other leagues.

Earlier this year, the European leagues all backed out of the IIHF-brokered transfer deal with the NHL, demanding an increase on the US$200,000 fee they receive when NHL clubs sign their out-of-contract players. Russia never signed that deal, which was reached three years ago, and this has created a great many legal battles over players moving from one league to another, most famously with Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin in 2006. Some teams were reportedly trying to lure the young star back to Russia, which is part of the reason why this meeting was held.

Nashville Predators forward Alexander Radulov has made the whole situation all the more confusing by signing a deal with KHL club Salavat Yulayev Ufa. Though Radulov still has one year remaining on his entry-level contract with the Predators, he signed a three-year deal with the Russian club worth a reported US$13 million.

It remains unclear whether the KHL will honor its new commitments to the NHL and quash the Radulov deal, but the 22-year-old remains determined to play in Russia next year for the reigning league champs. He is scheduled to earn $984,000 before performance bonuses next year in Nashville, according to The Hockey News. Were he to bolt to the KHL, he would be one of the top five highest-paid players in the league.

Russia Launches Continental Hockey League

BOULDER, Colorado -- Every summer I feel the need to get in my truck and drive a few thousand miles around this country. A road trip is great way to run away from your problems, at least temporarily, and you get a chance to visit friends in places you would normally just fly over traveling from one coast to another.

I had hoped to make a pilgrimage to Toronto to visit the Hockey Hall of Fame, but with the American dollar so weak, no free lodging in Ontario, and a carload of contraband fireworks, I thought it best not to risk an international border crossing. Though the trip was light on hockey, I did get in quite a bit of baseball, visiting the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City and catching minor league games on Coney Island and in flood-drenched Des Moines.

Some of the other highlights of the trip included a visit to Petersburg, KY's Creation Museum (you have no idea how crazy this place is until you have visited it - that's me to the right with a dinosaur with a saddle on it), Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary (prison museums are a hobby of mine), and the architectural wonders of Columbus, IN.

But now, onto the news ...

There has been some action on the Russian hockey front this summer. It appears as if Salavat Yulayev Ufa will be the last ever Superleague champions, as the top Russian circuit was dissolved at the conclusion of the season, to be replaced by a new 24-team league that will include teams from other former Soviet republics.

In April, new league president Alexander Medvedev, who is also the deputy chairman of Russian state-owned natural gas giant Gazprom and a member of the IIHF council, announced the creation of the Continental Hockey League (KHL).

The KHL will consist of 24 teams - 20 Russian clubs drawn from the Superleague, as well as Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg and Kazakhstan's Barys Astana, who both formerly played in the Russian Elite League, and Belorusian club Dynamo Misk, from the Belorusian Open Championship. The final club - Latvia's Dynamo Riga (logo pictured left) - was founded in April and will begin operations in the new league. The league championship trophy has been named the Gagarin Cup, after the famed Soviet cosmonaut.

The new league was created to challenge to NHL for both fans and players. "Our goal is to eventually become the best hockey league in the world," Medvedev said in an interview with the Russian paper Sovetsky Sport April 10. The new league president hopes that eventually the KHL will be able to attract top teams from Western European leagues as well.

Medvedev promised that the KHL would have much stricter rules regulating team finances and player transactions in order to prevent the instability and infighting that has plagued earlier incarnations of the Russian professional leagues.

The NHL has already entered into negotiations on a temporary agreement with the new league to prevent either league from poaching players. The initial proposal from the NHL falls short of a transfer agreement, something it has been unable to secure with the Russian Hockey Federation (RHF).

Medvedev has stated that his teams are free to sign whomever they like, whether they are under contract with an NHL club or not. But NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly claimed that he had assurances from the new league that there would be no poaching of contract players. "Mr. Medvedev, on behalf of the KHL, has already agreed to respect the valid and binding contractual obligations of players to NHL clubs," Daly said, as reported by the AP June 25.

Earlier this month, some Russian clubs caused quite a stir when they reportedly offered Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin roughly US$12.5 million per season to return to Russia. Malkin has chosen to stay in Pittsburgh in 2008-09, when he is scheduled to earn $3.8 million.

Malkin was at the center of the transfer agreement conflict when he left his Russian club, Metallurg Magnitogorsk, to join the Penguins in August 2006. Pittsburgh had drafted Malkin second overall in 2004, and a legal battle ensued between the clubs over his rights. Ultimately, US courts ruled that Malkin did not have to honor the final year of his contract with Metallurg, and that Pittsburgh had acquired his services legally.

This is the third major shakeup of Russian professional hockey since 2000, when the Professional Hockey League (PHL) was created as an umbrella organization for the country's top two leagues. Then in June 2006, RHF president Vladislav Tretiak dissolved the PHL and placed its teams under the direction of the federation.

The first proposal to create a regional hockey league to compete with the NHL was floated by Russian minister of sport and Hockey Hall of Famer Vyacheslav Fetisov in 2005. Fetisov proposed forming the Eurasion Hockey League (EAHL), which would include clubs from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia. That proposal was never enacted but formed the basis for this new league.

[Right: does anything happen in Russia these days without this company's stamp of approval?]