Alexander Radulov’s wait to return to the NHL appears to be at an end.
After a report hit last night that Radulov would be allowed to leave his KHL team and return to the Predators, Yahoo!'s Dmitry Chesnokov, via Pavel Lysenkov, reports that Radulov’s Russian agent confirms that Radulov will be heading back to Nashville this week.
According to the reports, Radulov was bought out of his KHL contract freeing him up to come back to the NHL. Chesnokov reports, however, that the party or person responsible for buying Radulov out of his contract is undisclosed. Hey, maybe Peyton Manning is doing Nashville a solid before coming to play football in town.
With Radulov already cleared to come back whenever he wants to, this sets things up for Radulov to join the Predators sooner than later. Barry Trotz says he hopes that Radulov will able to play with the team on Thursday against the Penguins.
As it is, rival GMs aren’t happy that Radulov is being allowed to come back when he pleases, but since Radulov already had an existing contract with the Predators he doesn’t need to go through the waivers circus that Marty Turco and Evgeni Nabokov had to go through in recent times.