Malkin's Next Suitor: The KHL

Boy, it must suck to be a Pittsburgh Penguins fan these days.

Consider: Last night you went to bed with the rumor that the team was ready to ship Evgeni Malkin to the LA Kings still dancing in your head. Today, you wake up and get confirmation that it was just a load of hooey.

But once you put that story aside, you see another. Except, unlike the last rumor, this one is based in cold, hard economic facts that could very well result in the team losing Malkin and getting nothing in return.

What's up now? Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star is reporting that several teams in the new Russian-sponsored Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) are ready to make Malkin the highest paid player in the world when his entry level contract with the Penguins expires next year. The figure: $12.5 million per year, roughly the equivalent of $15 million in the North America thanks to the fact that the Russians will let him draw his salary tax free.

What's worse, Westhead is also reporting that any KHL player who is signed away from an NHL club will not count against the team's salary cap. That's the sort of rule you only institute if you're preparing to go to war for players. Combine it all with the fact that there is no player transfer agreement at all in place between the NHL and Europe as a whole, and you have the distinct potential for all sorts of mischief.

So what are the chances of this really happening? While I'd still bet against it, NHL fans need to understand that there are economic and social factors at work here that will eventually result in a high profile player in the prime of his career bolting the NHL for the KHL.

Over the past several months, I've talked to more than a few folks familiar with the major players behind the league. Back in February, I talked with Pavel Lysenkov of Sovetsky Sport, who gave me the background on how the league was coming together. I followed that up with a conversation with Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russian energy giant Gazprom and the Russian representative to the International Ice Hockey Federation.

I came away from both of those conversations with the impression that the Russian hockey community, tired of being treated like a weak sister since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is committed to making the KHL work both as a sports league and a symbol of renewed Russian pride as the country claws its way back from the economic abyss thanks to rising global commodity prices.
Make no mistake my friends, these folks have boatloads of cash and they're willing to spend it. And if they're not able to snag Malkin, it will only be a matter of time before they snag somebody else, perhaps one of the young Russians you see drafted in Ottawa on Friday night.

A lot of oldtimers will talk to you about the war for players that erupted in the 1970s thanks to the rise of the old World Hockey Association. Folks -- the people in Russia have so much more money than the people behind the old WHA that it isn't even funny.

Thanks to my FanHouse colleague J.P. for the tip.