NHL vs. KHL could become war

It was just last week that I warned that Russia's nascent Kontinental Hockey League represented a legitimate threat to the way that the NHL did business. Now, here we are just a week later, and the brewing competition between the two leagues over hockey talent -- in particular Russian-born hockey talent -- is threatening to escalate into a full-scale war. First, we ought to recap what's happened since last week's column. On July 15, the NHL and the KHL announced that the two leagues had come to an interim agreement to respect one another's contracts -- an arrangement that would seem to indicate that the deal winger Alexander Radulov signed with Salavat Yulaev Ufa while still under contract with the Nashville Predators would be null and void. But that's not the understanding of KHL President Alexander Medvedev, who told... [read full story]