Lack of agreement has certain implications
July 21st, 2008 by thewordbirdThe fact that the four major parties involved in the Zurich meetings held by the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) between the KHL (Kontinential Hockey League-Russia) and the NHL/NHLPA were all well represented by big-time persons involved is one good sign. Now for the bad.
Just days later, six NHL contracts are held in dispute by Rene Fasel, the President of the IIHF. Most notably, young Russian star Alexander Radulov signed to play in Russia WITH ONE YEAR REMAINING on his current deal in Nashville. Now, I know that this story has been broken earlier, but I want to draw even more attention to this. I covered the Nashville Predators’ prospect pool extensively over the past few years, as it is one of the richer in the league. Alexander is an elite talent and his lack of respect for the struggling Predators is disheartening to say the least.
If players are going to default their existing contracts to play at home for more money, the NHL has a deep-rooted problem and Kudos to Bill Daly(NHL) and Paul Kelly (NHLPA) for attending the meetings in person. Even if they had little-to-nothing tangibly set to paper. It shows the respect for the situation, before the transfer agreements were in question. Below is a link to an article on the IIHF’s website of interest and there is further news regarding the ‘agreement’ in the archives. The New York Times has a few good articles as well.
http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/news/news-singleview/browse/1/article/contracts-to-be-respected.html?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=187&cHash=6040b04ab5
http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/nhl-and-khl-reach-agreement-to-try-to-reach-an-agreement-later/
Along with young star Radulov, another Russian of note that you may or may not of known much about is Viktor Tikhonov. His grandfather is Russian Coaching legend- Viktor Vasilevich Tikhonov. Recently a pick of the Coyotes, Tikhonov grew up in San Jose, California and has indicated clearly that he would like to play in North America, opposite of Radulov’s intentions. Wayne Gretzky selected Tikonov himself apparently and I made it clear in earlier blogs that I thought the Canucks would do well to draft Viktor this year….
Also on that front is the well documented intentions and statements by Nikita Filatov to play in Columbus for the BlueJackets this year. Filatov was one of the most sought after prospects in the NHL Entry Draft and the trepidation of NHL clubs being burned by the Russian Leagues from prospects never playing for their drafting club is one reason that Russia has hit all-time lows in draftees to the NHL.
You may ask: Well, what does all this have to do with the Canucks?
Well, besides the implications it holds for signing the Canucks’ prospects like Ilja Kablukhov, newly signed centre Jason Krog had a contract in place to play in Russia and instead signed a deal with Vancouver to stay in North America.
July 21st, 2008
Robin Keith Thompson
