So the International Ice Hockey Federation has announced that defected Nashville Predators winger Alexander Radulov was under a "binding and valid contract" when he left for Salavat Yulayev Ufa of the KHL. Which means ... well, nothing. The NHL won the beauty contest, and Radulov is still swimming in blue jeans and vodka.
The KHL has called for arbitration, the NHL was all like "let's go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland," and the KHL has been like, "What? What? Sorry, our cell is dying. Send us a message on Facebook.ru, OK?"
The IIHF, NHL and the NHLPA held a meeting in Berne, Switzerland, on Tuesday to discuss entering into an agreement with "all relevant European associations and leagues, including the KHL" to respect each other's contracts. In a separate issue, the parties are working towards a new Player Transfer Agreement by Spring 2009, but the IIHF says that it "would most probably not include the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia or the KHL."
Meanwhile, the New York Rangers (and a healthy Henrik Lundqvist) took out Metallurg Magnitogorsk, 4-3, to capture the Victoria Cup for the U.S. A parade is scheduled for never. And our official hockey comrades Dmitry Chesnokov and Pavel Lysenkov of SovSport put together some salary information about the KHL. Their findings, after the jump.
From SovSport:
If we are to roughly estimate, taking the difference in personal income tax - about 50% in North America and 13% in Russia, it is evident that the "poorest" NHL club (with a payroll of $20.35 million after tax) would be "richer" than Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, club with KHL's highest payroll ($16.55 million after tax).
However, the regular season had not started in the NHL, and the Kings' payroll currently is $31.94 million ($15,97 after tax). With this payroll the LA club would rank 6th in the KHL. But this is a temporary occurrence.
And another interesting observation: the highest paid NHL player Alex Ovechkin ($9,538 million cap hit) even after paying all his taxes ($4.769 million) would make more that all players of Dynamo Minsk ($4.43 million US) or Khimik Voskresensk ($4.38 million US) combined.
The difference in payrolls is huge. It will be on display today when the New York Rangers (with a payroll of $54.7 million) face Metallurg Magnitogorsk (with a payroll of $15.98 million) in Bern, Switzerland for the inaugural Victoria Cup. The Rangers' players are 3.5 times more "expensive."
