Since the Olympics last August, there’s been lotsa talk about NBAers going overseas to chase big money playing for European teams. And thanks to a new league that recently revved up in Russia, called the Continental Hockey League (KHL), the NHL is now hearing similar chatter.

(Society For The Preservation Of Cameltoes badly needs tardy payczech)

Jaromir Jagr has been the only high-profiler to make the jump to the first-year circuit, but that doesn’t mean that the league has been a smashing success. Along with the untimely death of Rangers prospect Alexei Cherepanov during an early season game, the OTTAWA CITIZEN reports the KHL is undergoing some serious financial growing pains.

There have been reports that Ufa, the team that signed forward Alexander Radulov even though he was still under contract to the Nashville Predators, hasn’t paid its players in three months.

The Metallurg team in Magnitogorsk, one of the league’s powers, has also had money problems and the Cherepovets club in Severstal may not have paid its players since August. Moscow Spartak and MVD Balashika, a club sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior (police), are also apparently behind in payments.

Even Jagr’s vowel-challenged team in Omsk is said to have missed payroll. Read more…

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• A 19-year-old top prospect of the Rangers’ dies during a game in Russia, and it might be from a blow accidentally delivered by his teammate Jaromir Jagr.
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UPDATE - 5:46 PT: All the details of the situation can now be found at Stu Hackel’s NEW YORK TIMES hockey blog. Jaromir Jagr was not involved in Alexei Cherepanov’s collapse and death. Kudos to Yahoo’s PUCK DADDY for staying on top of the story as well.

From our earlier post: Canada’s TSN has some shocking news today, reporting that New York Rangers top prospect Alexei Cherepanov “collapsed on the bench at or near the end of Omsk’s Kontinental Hockey League game and died a short time later, he was 19.”

Omsk head coach Wayne Fleming said “Cherepanov collapsed on the bench during the third period of the game and did not see anything that happened on the ice that may have contributed to it.”

CPR was next administered to no effect. TSN also notes that the “ambulance that is normally at all games had already departed and had to be called back.”

Now the crazy part. PUCK DADDY’s Greg Wyshynski notes a hockey blog that “has been a reliable source for translated Russian news in the past” is reporting that Jaromir Jagr may have been involved in the death.
Read more…