CSKA already illegally signed the Russian star. The club was sanctioned for the transfer of Yashin
Rodion Vlasov August 21, 2023, 14:15 Moscow time Audio version: Your browser does not support the audio element.
The center forward played for the army during the disputes with Ottawa, but this did not bring much benefit to CSKA.
Sergei Fedorov spoke about the Fedotov case in the style of the persecuted editorials of the Pravda newspaper of around 1949, but the CSKA coach clearly expressed the main idea: Ivan Fedotov will start the season as part of the team, despite the disqualification.
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Luc Tardif, when asked directly what consequences threaten CSKA in this case, muttered something incomprehensible in his corporate style. But in the history of our hockey there is at least one precedent when a player with a valid NHL contract came to play for CSKA, and his name was Alexei Yashin. This story was short and, as it turned out, unsuccessful for the army.
Yashin was selected by Ottawa with the second number in the 1992 draft. A year later, the club selected Alexander Daigle as number one, who received monstrous PR and was considered a future superstar. There were no salary caps for newcomers to the NHL at the time, and Daigle’s agents, amid the hysteria surrounding Eric Lindros, struck out a fancy contract at the time: $2.45 million a year. Yashin received three times less, while he quickly began to demonstrate much higher productivity than Daigle – in the first season, our player outscored his teammate by 28 points (79-51).
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Before the start of the lockout-shortened 1995 season, the player and management signed a gentlemen’s agreement: if Yashin scores 46 points, the parties will renew the contract. Yashin beat Daigle again (44-37), but the striker did not reach the agreed mark, so the Club’s management refused to negotiate the contract. Yashin and his agent Mark Gandler were shocked by this, went on strike, and demanded an immediate trade. It should be noted that at that time, not only the majority of fans, but also many club managers were on the side of the Russian center: for example, the director of player relations John Ferguson resigned due to disagreement with the general manager.
Alexei Yashin in Ottawa
Photo: Mitchell Layton/Getty Images
So, Yashin had a valid contract, but he refused to honor it and did not come to the Senators’ training camp. Then CSKA drew attention to the player, who in the early 90s bled to death from the mass outflow of hockey players abroad and the difficult situation of military sports in general. “Quite by chance I found out that Lesha does not play, he is not even at the club’s training camp. I called him, invited him to play at home until the conflict was resolved,” the club’s general director Valery Gushchin told reporters. At the same time, Yashin left for Ottawa from Dynamo; according to the rules of the time, the blue and whites had the rights of the player. Gushchin, however, insisted that Yashin would play for CSKA until the striker established relations with Ottawa.
The Dynamo leadership did not protest much. “If his stay in Russia was long enough, it could be talked about,” then club boss Alexander Steblin told reporters. Yashin himself said: “Dynamo” I am immensely grateful. I really wanted to help young people with my game, now there are a lot of them at CSKA”. The player spoke emphatically about Ottawa: “They deceived me, they promised me a new contract for a year and a half, but they didn’t keep their word… For now I want to get a swap from Ottawa and play for another club.”
The representatives of the IIHF and the NHL immediately rose up: even before Yashin’s debut for CSKA, the international federation sent a formidable fax to the FHR office, threatening to disqualify both the player and the club. As it turned out, Yashin was admitted to the games of the league (then still inter-ethnic) by a personal decision of the president of the MHL Robert Cherenkov, who did not warn his colleagues in the federation about this. The leaders of the IIHF, representatives of CSKA and the NHL urgently met in Zurich, who decided that Yashin should not play for CSKA.
As now, the decision of the international federation CSKA was not going to be carried out. Cherenkov urgently canceled his own decision, and when the army team arrived in Nizhnekamsk for the game with Neftekhimik, the judges demanded that the guests remove Yashin from the team. CSKA refused. As a result, Yashin played someone else’s number, and in the game protocol, despite the three points, the main star of the team was simply not there. Three days later, in a home match with Minsk “Tivali”, Yashin did not score points, but he again acted as a “non-existent” hockey player.
Alexei Yashin (left)
Photo: Igor Utkin/TASS
As expected, the NHL arbitration decided in favor of Ottawa, Yashin went abroad and managed to play four matches for CSKA, two of which (Neftekhimik and Tivali) followed after the decision was made that the striker could not play in the MHL. The IIHF disqualified CSKA from international competitions until the end of the season (then the army team did not really play there), and according to the documents of the international federation, the league council, which included all the leaders of the clubs, handed CSKA two technical defeats with a score of 0:5.
Right now, the KHL is still associated with the FHR, which delegates the rights to the league to host the Russian championship. Through the FHR, the league is also connected to the IIHF; at the same time, there is no separate “Russian Championship compensation” for regular season matches. Can Fedotov, in theory, be in the state of Yashin-1995 and the club get technical defeats in the matches in which he participates? At this time, CSKA will obviously seek appeals in all possible instances, and only then will it receive a not very pleasant surprise from international bodies.
