Posted on 03/11/2008 2:12:28 AM PDT by vertolet
The days of N.H.L. teams signing players off Russian clubs’ rosters are about to officially end, thanks to Vladimir V. Putin.
As Russians prepared to go to the polls for last weekend’s presidential election, Putin signed a labor law that tied athletes to their clubs for the length of their contracts — putting Russian contract law in line with similar laws in North America and Europe. Under the previous Russian law, all a player needed to get out of a contract was to give his club 14 days’ notice that he was leaving.
That clause enabled N.H.L. teams to swoop and sign players away from Russia for more than a decade. The most famous example was Evgeni Malkin, whom Pittsburgh in 2006 signed away from Metallurg Magnitogorsk, Malkin’s hometown club in the Superliga.
The case prompted Vladislav Tretiak, the former Soviet goaltending great and now the head of the Russian Hockey Federation and a member of the Russian Parliament, to co-sponsor a bill closing the 14-day loophole. The bill passed over the summer and was signed by Putin on Feb. 29. It will go into effect March 30, but its impact has already been felt, as N.H.L. teams have stopped importing Russians.
Now if an N.H.L. team wants to sign a Superliga player, it will have to pay his club an agreed-upon transfer fee, as in international soccer, or wait until the player’s contract expires and he becomes a free agent. That may mean only wealthy teams like Detroit, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dallas or the Rangers can consider signings in a Russian market in which a transfer fee for one player might run into the millions of dollars.
Russian players already in the N.H.L. said the new law would have an effect. “Guys are probably going to play through...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Waaanna way out?
1. Sign the deal with Amerikans (under the table).
2. Start screwing up the games.
3. Yo momma club will fire you.
4. You move to Amerika.
5. Get bolshoi money and and key to Mayflower hotel room (ask Spitzer)
6. Remember how to play again.
7. Send 10% to Leo
8. Screw Putin.
Waaanna way out?
1. Sign the deal with Amerikans (under the table).
2. Start screwing up the games.
3. Yo momma club will fire you.
4. You move to Amerika.
5. Get bolshoi money and and key to Mayflower hotel room (ask Spitzer)
6. Remember how to play again.
7. Send 10% to Leo
8. Screw Putin.
So in other words Russians will start treating contracts like, uh, contracts?
This move is aimed directly at the Red Wings (Army).
“So in other words Russians will start treating contracts like, uh, contracts?”
LOL...great post. Sports contracts in the US are a joke, aren’t they? May as well be written on toilet paper.
That would be true about 13 years ago. Now it’s the Swedes.
That almost exactly correlates with my move from Michigan. Now I only get to watch the Red Wings a few times a year on network TV.
I don’t think this is that big a deal. It’s not like they are going to a system like we had in pro sports with the reserve clause where athletes could only sign with their original team that signed them. Remember, there was no free agency at all until the 70’s.
All international team sports have this system already in place (transfer fees, etc. in soccer are a given for example). Russian teams were losing players left and right to the NHL for awhile. This at least looks like an attempt to bring a rational approach to what has been a difficult long term relationship between Russia and the NHL.
It use to take player defections to be able to play in the NHL - i.e.-Fetisov, Kasatanov, Makarov and Larionov were the early big names that defected. But then the pendulum shifted so far that Malkin actually did run out on his contract. Fetisov is now head of the Russian Hockey Federation; if anyone knows what should be a true balance, he would.
Missing the Red Wings is probably the only downside to leaving Michigan...
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