Buried under the news of who would start Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final was the news that the KHL and the NHL are very close to signing a transfer agreement.
The Importance of the NHL/KHL Agreement
This will be an upgrade of the current Memorandum of Understanding and allow for several things. You can read a fuller version here but, in short, it allows two main things: More transparency, and open routes both ways between the leagues with compensation. This means less arguing around where players like Viktor Tikhonov are going and teams are compensated if a player suddenly voids out of a contract and leaves the team, like Yevgeni Medvedev with Ak Bars Karzan or Jussi Rynnas. This is pretty helpful and also means the free agency periods of the leagues now align. This is all very important; a little bit dreamy but very important.
For a start, it’s transparent and sets a limit between the leagues of offer sheets and other barriers that go across. Like I wrote before about Anders Nilsson, there are several players who are stuck by rights and money with little option to do anything except wait until July 1st and hope for the best. It means players, not just European players, but also those who are caught in the AHL or minor leagues would have an option to easily play somewhere else with a very high standard without damaging their previous team or being again caught with contracts they can’t get out of. Justin Azevedo is a key example of such a North American player, or even Steve Moses, both of whom got caught in the minor leagues and managed to flourish, and become dominant forces on their teams – Moses was even able to make the NHL again. There’s a brighter hope now of players being able to go both ways between the leagues without the fears of Roman Rotenburg giving a blank cheque to people like Alexander Burmistrov or Igor Yakolvev, who turned down many NHL offers because of the amount of money Rotenburg had offered.
Speaking of the master of throwing cheques, this should also slow the cannibalization of other clubs, as SKA has done to teams like Atlant or Sochi with fairer compensation and more options for those players caught. No wonder Rotenburg wasn’t quite fond of the agreement, saying: “And if they do [sign], And if they are able to take away the [drafted] children on contracts from us, and the NHL won’t be able to return anybody for ourselves. Such an agreement isn’t necessary for us, we won’t sign it.” His worry about young players drafted in the KHL is valid, however it works both ways.
While it would be possible for the NHL to swipe young draftees away, it could work against the NHL as well. We can take a hypothetical scenario of former Montreal Canadiens prospect Brady Vail, who, despite being drafted by the Habs, never signed an ELC with the team. The Toronto Marlies did sign him however, but this could be an example of where the KHL can sweep in. After all, not everyone who is drafted makes the NHL, and while most people drafted in the KHL will make the KHL, some can be stuck in shifts of the minor leagues without touching the limelight. Barry Brust, Evgeni Dadonov, Igor Makarov, Alexander Salak… the list of players who barely missed the NHL is endless. On the other hand is a player like Alexander Dergachev , a KHL drafted boy who never even saw a glimpse of the KHL, while Alexander Barbanov, Igor Shestyorkin, and even Dimity Yudin all saw time with the bulk of SKA.
Something like this could be an easier route for players who could never make the limelight to theoretically find a way into the KHL. Let’s also not forget that the KHL isn’t just Russia. Jokerit Helsinki of Finland is a beautiful example of young talent being grown from Finland. Or Sibir Novobrinsk, who I wrote about concerning their remarkable way of taking all sorts of players who were left off of their former teams’ rosters and giving them a second chance. Open routes and ways of getting out of contracts easier with compensation mean there are more options available to players and more power to the players.
The further advantage of having this deal is that, and this might be bit of a dream, it will offer far more unity between the leagues, not just with the players and organisations, but also the fans. How many players can offer a better look at some of the talent who has managed to fall into the KHL’s hands from the NHL’s leftovers and shone? For every North American tweet that says what they did with Ilya Kovalchuk or Alex Radulov was wrong, there’ll be a Tikhonov who is actively heading to free agency but hasn’t dropped his contract yet with SKA, or a Medevev, who terminated his contract with Ak Bars barely an hour before signing with the Flyers. Or Kirill Petrov, who canceled his contract before going straight to the Islanders. Or even Avangard, who have lost Sergey Kalinin, who was picked up by the NHL and taken away with nothing to show.
Ultimately it will help bridge the two groups and give light to European hockey. It will help and hopefully show the KHL in a far better light than North American media tends to paint it, and the great stories of players like Jan Laco, Anders Nilsson, Justin Azevedo, and Matt Gilory can be read. Maybe it is a fanatical approach, but there is very little harm in getting the hockey world to be as connected and integrated as, say, football is, with people in France wearing Barcalona shirts as a CSKA Moscow game is being shown in England. It’ll attempt to put hockey above international politics and try to make it become more widespread and inviting. To open up lines and have free movement of players is a massive benefit, to not only the players and leagues but the fans as well.
There are still many concerns with this, but with the NHL a little less talkative to the media than the KHL, most of the viewpoints and talks from it come from the KHL’s side. KHL president Dmitry Chernyshenko expressed concern with the NHL throwing money at players as compensation. After all, the American dollar is worth far more than the ruble. We can see how Rotenburg cannibalized other clubs with pay-outs of 180 million rubles for a player, but now the NHL could easily trump that with a player they like and peel away the talent at an easier rate, especially from clubs without heavy, wealthy businessmen at their helm. The KHL and NHL will fight a hard bargain to greet this as mutually beneficial as possible, and we can only hope that it indeed does get created, and the relationships between the leagues does become more open and friendlier.
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