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KHL, NHL Truce?
by PuckStopsHere on 05/22/10 at 11:54 AM ET
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The NHL has been without a full player transfer agreement with Russia since 2005. This is an agreement that governs players jumping from North American to Russian leagues and vice versa and sets fees for them doing so. This has led to several controvesies. the biggest of which was Alexander Radulov jumping from Saavat Yulaev from the Nashville Predators when he had a contract with Nashville.
Both sides have announced a “memorandum of understanding”. This is not a transfer agreement. it isn’t clear how much of an agreement it is at all. Here is the KHL announcement of the agreement. There is no big NHL announcement on the internet.
Both sides agree to respect each others contracts and share contract information. There is mention of an unspecified method to resolve disagreements. Is this much of a step in any direction?
Last year the biggest disagreement was over Jiri Hudler. The disagreement was about the fact he wasn’t an unrestricted free agent. He was restricted and had filed for salary arbitration. There is nothing about how to handle this type of disagreement and both sides have restricted free agents that both sides claim are free to sign, while both have disagreed about their rfa’s being available in the past. Likely there will be conflict between the KHL and NHL this summer over player signings. It isn’t clear if this agreement will do much to stop them.
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You hit the nail on the head--the KHL’s going to continue to poach restricted free agents because it believes that any player whose contract has lapsed is a “beyond all bounds free agent” (that’s the literal translation), while any KHL player under 28 who has to automatically re-up with his team whether he likes it or not (that sounds like a RFA, doesn’t it?) should merit a six or seven-figure transfer fee on a per-player basis--which is explicitly illegal per the NHL’s CBA.
This “agreement of mutual understanding” seems like nothing more than window dressing.
Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 05/22/10 at 02:38 PM ET