Excellent points.

I agree that holding him to his previously-signed contract if he ever returns to the NHL is likely the most sensible solution - even if Nashville gets Radulov back, he can’t possibly be at his best as a player (even if he doesn’t intentionally tank games out of spite), just because he won’t be happy and will only be biding his time until he can play in Russia without any encumberances.

It will hurt Nashville, no doubt, but there isn’t any other logical solution - and as the article pointed out, with the legal morass the owndership is in, they have more pressing issues than the whereabouts of a flighty but extremely talented forward.

This is a battle they can’t win, and it takes away their energy and attention from more important issues for the long-term health of the team.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 08/04/08 at 01:42 PM ET

I couldn’t agree more with your take on this. Ultimately starting up a new Cold War on ice over something that can be worked out via negotiation and compromise is bad for business all round.

It sucks in the short term for the Preds, but it’s not a fatal blow to their season. If it is, they’re in worse shape than we believed. As a player he cannot be replaced but adding depth in one or two players via free agency (Parrish?) or trade could soften the blow.

Ultimately this is all about fair compensation for Russian teams in particular and European teams in general. The Europeans have a justifiable beef, and it’s up to the NHL to stop being cheap and start negotiating a more fair system of player transfer compensation.

Posted by Lyle Richardson from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/04/08 at 03:17 PM ET

The “new Cold War” is already happening.  The Russians are more than ready to go after NHL stars, and their logic about whether contracts are binding---NHL contract = no big whoop, but somehow, the KHL’s contracts were both re-issued and yet player movement was allowed between teams in the KHL, though the players NHL chose to sign are miraculously not free agents--is curious at best.

As far as the correspondents who follow the KHL are concerned, this business is payback, and the start of re-establishing the “fact” that the KHL and NHL should be equal parters as the co-best hockey leagues in the world, and re-establishing Russian hockey as superior.  The polemics being issued on a daily basis regarding the evil that is the NHL are just astonishing in their venom and pompousness, and...It’s becoming evident that the KHL subscribes to the theories postulated by the media, at least in part.

Barring Radulov from the World Championships would be the European equivalent of barring a player from taking part in the Stanley Cup playoffs over here...and I’m not sure that the KHL would even listen as it has a lower opinion of the IIHF than the NHL does. 

I don’t buy the concept that this is “fair play.” The KHL is just as willing to poach players and is more than happy to all but shut the door on the Russia-to-NHL pipeline, regardless of players’ wishes or their legal rights, so playing dirty and starting a war, as far as I’m concerned, is just getting down to the business of dealing with the reality of this situation and dealing with the reality of the fact that the KHL doesn’t really give a damn what the IIHF thinks. 

The Russians say that their moratorium on honouring NHL contracts ends on the 15th of August, and after that, they’re going to go after NHL’ers with legally binding contracts once again.  The supposed courtship of Gaborik by Spartak just indicates that the KHL’s teams are giving everybody a ring to see whether there are any other players that are willing to jump at big, tax-free money. 

I think that, in the end, the NHL and KHL will have to get down to the business of arranging their own détente, though it might be brokered by the IIHF, because the KHL doesn’t plan on stopping this scrap any time soon.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 08/04/08 at 03:49 PM ET

I know that a lot of what I said sounds like tending the fire by adding a little napalm to the situation, but what the KHL’s GM’s and owners are saying to the Russian press and what Medvedev’s saying to the English press are different stories, and the vitriol that’s flowing over there is more battery acidic than typically acerbic. 

The ideological war is pretty damn vicious, and it’s been “on” since Igor Larionov of all people wanted out, and the outrage at someone even having the gall to suggest that Soviet-style hockey was not the pinnacle of the sport. 

The Russian press still pumps out the Soviet-era treatises and essays about the inherent superiority of Russian hockey and the status of the Superleague/KHL as, at worst, a league that should be seen as on par with and an equal of the NHL, and as far as they’re concerned, the bill’s come due, and it’s payback city from here on out as a finally fully-financially stocked Russian hockey league will forcefully assert that the clutch-and-grab-happy soccer on ice that is the sometimes plodding pace of play at the KHL level and Russian hockey development (which is just barely starting to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union, so let’s conveniently forget that the KHL’s best goalies are usually imports) must be given the respect they’ve deserved for the last 20 years. 

I won’t deny or suggest that the NHL’s anything less than really peeved that they have to pay any compensation to any country to bring players to the “best league in the world,” and if they could pluck the leading scorers from the Russian, Finnish, Swedish, German, etc. leagues mid-season, they would, but the KHL isn’t battling for fair compensation.

Every indication I’ve read over the last six months suggests that they want to give the NHL 20 years’ worth of comeuppance en masse as the KHL slowly but surely establishes itself as the league to be reckoned with in drawing the world’s best players to the world’s best game.

The war’s already on, and I have no problem with reaching a detente, but the NHL can’t wade into this mess with anything less than its stick up and the laces on its gloves loose so that they can be tossed when necessary.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 08/04/08 at 11:06 PM ET