First off, Brian Burke made his first move as GM of the Leafs today acquiring Brad May for a conditional 6th rounder (what's the condition? I don't know). May is a tough guy, and as you all know Burke likes to mold his top 6 and bottom 6 forwards with specific role players. So I guess that's what he's doing here. Also maybe he's bringing in players for when he starts to sell guys off like Antropov and Poni, he'll have some guys to fill out the roster. Kulemin has been assigned to the Marlies... for now.
Now, onto the KHL. Last night on Sportsnet they were talking about how the KHL is in a bad financial situation and they may be asking their players to all take a 40% salary cutback to keep the league alive. Well if this happens its safe to say a lot of these players will be bolting for the NHL. The K does have a bunch of star players who could easily come (back) to the NHL and be big time performers.
Here are a few of the bigger names and top performers. When looking at the stats keep in mind that over there they don't give out 2nd assists so points totals tend to look small sometimes. See how many of these names you recognize. I'll keep the teammates altogether.
Player, (Age), Gp G - A - PTS
From Salavat Yulayev (1st place)
Alex Tereshenko (28), 28 21 - 25 - 46
Alex Perezhogin (25), 40 25 - 16 - 41
Alex Radulov (22), 40 18 - 22 - 40
Oleg Tverdovsky (32), 33 7 - 15 - 22
other notables from this team are:
Well no one really, remember Konstantin Koltsov? Ya he's playing there but he's not producing at all.
From Mytischi Atlant (2nd place)
Sergei Mozyakin (27), 41 21 - 30 - 51
other notables from thsi team are Alexander Koralyuk (31 pts), ex-Leaf Igor Korelev, Yan Bulis, Denis Arkipov and goalie Ray Emery.
From Kazan Akbars (3rd place)
Alexei Morozov (31), 34 23 - 29 - 52
Denis Zaripov (27), 41 25- 25 - 50
other notables from this team are:
Niko Kapanen, Oleg Petrov, Nikita Alexeev, Goalies Wade Dubliewicz and Freddy Norrena
From Yaroslav Locomotiv (4th place)
Alexei Yashin (35), 40 14 - 20 - 34
other notables from YL are:
Rugged blueliner Vitali Vishnevski, Josef Vasicek,
From the rest of the league here are your better known names:
Stanislav Chistov, Karel Pilar, Nils Ekman, Sergei Brylin, Andrei Zyuzin, Darius Kasparitus, Robert Esche (.912 Sv%, 18-9-2, 1.82 GAA, wow Esche), Oleg Saprykin, Petr Shastlivy, Alex Suglobov, Maxim Kondratiev, Jussi Markenen (back up, bad numbers), Andrei Nikolashin (remember him? He's leading his team in scoring 34 pts in 40 games), Oleg Kvasha, Branko Radevojevic (remember him? tops on his team 37 pts in 40 games), Ladislav Nagy (What happened? 14 pts in 34 games, just 3 goals), Joel Kwiatkowski, Jaromir Jagr (20 and 23 for 43 pts in 40 games. But you know he's dominating the play), Jakub Klepis.
Now that's just players from the teams who are in the top half of the league in standings. Its pretty clear making this list that the NHL could not house a lot of these NHL calibre guys. I think its good that there's another kind of high end league out there. Just look at the part of the roster of Moscow Dynamo:
Petr Cajanek, Dmitry Afanasankov, Karel Rachunek, Alexei Zhitnik, Matthias Weinhandl, Vitali Yachmenev, Dimitri Shitikov (okay I don't know him either but great name), and Danny Markov.
I bet out of the entire list there are a dozen guys NHL teams would still really want. Anyway's that's it for now.
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