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Evgeni Nabokov leaves the NHL, signs with KHL’s SKA St. Petersburg

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If you missed the 2010 Western Conference final between the San Jose Sharks and the Chicago Blackhawks, you missed Evgeni Nabokov’s last game in the NHL. Russian newspaper Sovetsky Sport is reporting that the former Sharks goaltender has signed a four year contract with SKA St. Petersburg (link is in Russian) in the Kontinental Hockey League in Russia. Alexander Zaitsev from website Russian Hockey Fans has the details.

Evgeny Nabokov has signed a 4-year, $24-million contract with SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL, as reported by the Russian newspaper Sovetsky Sport.

The Sharks already made their bed with goaltending by saying they weren’t bringing back Nabokov in the first place and then signing Antero Niittymaki to seal the deal. The rest of the league followed suit by not hurrying up to sign both Nabokov and Dallas’ Marty Turco. With money seemingly running thin around the NHL and goaltending jobs being filled by less-expensive players, the writing was on the wall for Nabokov and the money was out there to be had back home in Russia. One interesting note to add, according to Yahoo’s Dmitry Chesnokov, SKA St. Petersburg also went out of the way to make special arrangements for Nabokov.

Nabokov’s Russian agent Isakov told Sovetsky Sport that “Nabokov will come over to Russia in the beginning of August with his entire family. We agreed on the sum with the St Petersburg club long time ago, and we were figuring out living related questions lately, which were related to the move of Evgeni’s family to St. Petersburg.”

The curious side effect of all this is the one it has on Ilya Kovalchuk’s negotiations. Earlier today we mentioned that SKA St. Petersburg was also inquiring into Kovalchuk’s availability. The catch with how things go salary cap-wise in the KHL is that each team is allowed to ignore salary restrictions on one player per team. SKA St. Petersburg has now used that exception on Nabokov, thus making any potential offers to Kovalchuk impossible to complete.

Unless another KHL team was to step out and make a possible offer, Kovalchuk is now left with having to negotiate with NHL teams which means having to make salary demands a bit more NHL-friendly if he’d like to play here. The cynical side of me wants to say that there’s no coincidence in Nabokov’s announcement and the news that Ilya Kovalchuk has re-engaged discussion with the Los Angeles Kings in contract talks.

UPDATE: Yahoo’s Dmitry Chesnokov clears up the KHL salary discussion via Twitter.


There is no salary cap in the KHL for players signed (or poached) from the NHL. For those who were asking.

In other words, the KHL has carte blanche from KHL President Andrei Medvedev to sign any players from the NHL they can potentially bring on. Of course, then it’s up to those teams to be able to afford the players which is another thing entirely in some cases.