Apparently, the KHL, and league president Alexander Medvedev, have agreed to suddenly drop contract disputes and take Alexander Radulov's case to arbitration or court.
This news comes from seemingly nowhere, as the KHL had taken a hard stand against all disputed contracts and demanded that A-Rad belonged to the KHL legally up until, well, yesterday.
According to this report, (full story found at http://www.thehockeynews.com/), the KHL has agreed to drop the disputes over Nikita Filatov, Viktor Tihkonov, Tomas Mozjis, Jason Krog, and Fedor Fedorov and allow each player to play for their respective NHL clubs, while the Radulov case could quite possibly be settled much sooner than we all thought. The KHL still disputes the contract signings of Vjateslav Voinov, Andrei Lohtionev, and Maxim Mayorov, but the fact that any of these disputes have been solved at all is a good sign.
Now, the interesting twist is that the NHL continues to put up a hard-nosed approach. Bill Daly, who has been the NHL's main voice in all of this, said the following
“The facts couldn't be more clear,” Daly said in an email to thn.com. “But instead of revealing what (the IIHF’s) investigation actually found – which is that Radulov is under contract to Nashville and should be playing there this season - they pulled the chute and took the easy way out. Very, very disappointing. Its seems that the KHL is making decisions for the IIHF these days.”
Daly was likely referring at the end of the qoute to the recent election of Medvedev to the executive board of the IIHF. It's hard to believe that the NHL wouldn't accept these concessions with smiles and thought's of a certain Staples quote ("That was easy."), yet they continue to keep up the argument almost as if they were enjoying a bit of playful banter.
*Sigh* We'll see how this all turns out, but for now.....WHY ISN'T IT OCTOBER???
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