Orlov is awesome; don't expect to see him

The man-crushes for Dimtri Orlov coming out of the Capitals development camp were embarassing. He was so impressive that he took some of the shine off of John Carlson. I'll admit that I even got on the bandwagon. I started to doubt my evaluation of his draft position. He said he wanted to play in North America, he played a lot better than his scoreline would indicate, maybe he wasn't a reach for a second round pick.

Well it might turn out that I was right in my assessment after all. Dmitri Chernov tweets/reports (tworts?) that Orlov will play in the KHL next year. This suggests that he doesn't have an out in his contract. A couple of years ago, not having an out clause didn't matter. Hockey players were governed by Russia's labor laws which considered them employees. All that was required to get out of a contract was to give your employer(team)
two weeks notice. In the spring of 2008, the Russian Parliament changed the law to exempt athletes. This, in conjuction with the formation of the KHL out of the Russian Super League, closed the loophole.

The KHL is trying to enact monetary transfers similar to the ones that are prevalent in soccer and they are playing hardball with the NHL to force the issue. The new "regulations" of the KHL state that a player not under contract to his team is a Restricted Free Agent until he turns 28. As an RFA he must re-sign with his team. In the NHL an RFA can sign an offer sheet from another team in the league and his original team gets compensatory draft picks or he can choose to sign in another league and his team gets nothing. The out clause in the KHL is a "buyout". If a player wants to play for a different team, he can pay between 1/3 and 1/2 of his salary to his KHL team and be a free to sign with whoever he wants to. Traktor Chelyabinsk is taking the Florida Panthers to court for signing Evgeny Dadonov and this outcome may well be different than when Moscow Dinamo took the Pens to court over Malkin. Traktor has Russian law on their side this time and I'm not sure that an American judge in Florida will be all that familiar with international hockey transfer agreements. Nikita Filatov jumped to the NHL last season and other than some chest beating, and banning him from international competition, nothing was done about it.

Two players, Denis Parshin and Sergei Shirokov both RFA's, took the KHL to court. They wanted the Russian court to strike down the "RFAs belong to the club until 28" clause in the KHL regulations. They lost, from all accounts, badly.

What does this mean for Orlov? It's too soon to tell, but this is exactly the reason that I had him as a third round selection at best on my draft charts. It's pretty certain that he'll play in the KHL this year. Depending on how the Dadonov case goes, he might be in North America for the 2010-2011 season. If the judge in FL upholds the KHL stance and the NHL doesn't allow clubs to pay the buyout, the earliest the Caps would see Orlov is 2019.

(h/t to pucks&books @ OFB for the inspiration)