By JEFF Z. KLEIN and KARL-ERIC REIF
The New York Times
Published: November 12, 2006
Last season the N.H.L. reaped its first real crop of superstars in years: Washington’s exciting Russian, Alexander Ovechkin, and Pittsburgh’s husky Nova Scotian, Sidney Crosby. This season there are more sensational rookies: Slovenia’s Anze Kopitar in Los Angeles, the Polish-born Canadian Wojtek Wolski in Colorado, Alaska’s Matt Carle in San Jose and Ontario’s Jordan Staal in Pittsburgh. All are well worth watching, but first among equals is yet another Pittsburgh talent, Evgeni Malkin, a lanky 20-year-old forward from Magnitogorsk, Russia.
The second selection in the 2004 draft, Malkin postponed his departure for the N.H.L. He remained with his club team in the Russian Superliga, Metallurg Magnitogorsk — or Magnitka, as its fans often call it — supposedly with the understanding that he would be allowed to play in North America for the 2006-7 season. The situation was complicated when the Russian hockey federation refused to renew an agreement that allowed N.H.L. clubs to sign away players for a relatively low $200,000 transfer fee.
When Pittsburgh tried to sign Malkin last summer, Metallurg demanded something substantially larger than what had been the standard transfer fee. The Penguins argued that they did not have to pay anything, since the agreement with the Russian federation had expired.
What ensued did not quite rise to the cloak-and-dagger level of the Peter Stastny and Alexander Mogilny episodes of the Cold War period, but a bit of foreign intrigue was involved nonetheless. Malkin signed a one-year contract with Metallurg in August reportedly worth $3.45 million — but then bolted the team a few days later in Helsinki, Finland, and was spirited off to Los Angeles and then Pittsburgh.
Malkin missed the Penguins’ first four games because of a shoulder injury, but his Oct. 18 introduction to the N.H.L. was a smash in more ways than one. He scored Pittsburgh’s only goal in a 2-1 home loss to the Devils, dazzled with his passes and shattered the glass with an errant slap shot.
He scored goals in each of his next five games, becoming the first N.H.L. player to score in his first six games since the Hall of Famer Joe Malone did it in the league’s inaugural 1917-18 season. The goals have not come by accident; several, like the dipsy-doodle split-the-defense number he scored in a rematch with the Devils on Oct. 24, have been of highlight-reel quality.
Malkin, a center in Russia, made the transition to left wing for his first nine games, playing on Crosby’s line opposite yet another gifted youngster, Colby Armstrong. On Wednesday against Tampa Bay, Malkin moved back to center. He did not do much, but his replacement on Crosby’s line, Nils Ekman, scored three goals in 4 minutes 10 seconds.
Pittsburgh, twice Stanley Cup champions in the early 1990s but a sad-sack club on the brink of bankruptcy in recent years, is reaping the rewards of the high draft picks brought its way by years of losing. Malkin, Crosby, Staal, Armstrong, defenseman Ryan Whitney and goaltender Marc-André Fleury are all among the team’s best players and all are between 18 and 23, boding well for a new victory march of the Penguins in the near future.
There is one potential hitch: Metallurg is suing the Penguins and the N.H.L. in United States federal court over Malkin’s signing.
“They all like to talk about democracy, the American way, and then they shamelessly steal our best players,” Gennady Velichkin, Metallurg’s general director, told Reuters. “He was our gold diamond, our prize possession. He had a contract with us. We were building the whole team around him, and now he is gone.”
Metallurg is seeking an injunction that would prevent Malkin from playing for the Penguins. The hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan.
With Malkin in its lineup last season, Metallurg dominated the Russian Superliga with a 42-5-4 record, including a 25-game unbeaten streak, and was so strong it clinched the regular-season title with a month and a half left on the schedule.
But this season has been a bit of a struggle for the club. Malkin is gone, of course, as are several of the team’s top scorers. Last week, Metallurg was seventh in the 19-team Superliga, with an 11-9-1 record.
Another change from last season: Dave King, the coach, is no longer with the team. King, a former coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Canadian national team, joined Metallurg for 2005-6 and was the first North American to head any Russian club. After Metallurg crashed out of the playoffs with a semifinal loss to Roman Abramovich’s richly financed Avangard Omsk, King returned for the start of this season. But a 3-4-1 start prompted his firing.
“We lost four players to the N.H.L. and others to other Russian clubs,” King said from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., “All signed away. The problem was that our team had pushed through a leaguewide $11 million salary cap to keep expenses down. But without a system to keep track of payrolls, a lot of clubs ignored the cap. We stuck to it, because it was our manager’s idea.”
King said he enjoyed his stint in Magnitogorsk, a steel city of 415,000 in the southern Urals about 900 miles east of Moscow. “It was built under Stalin in the 1930s and placed well to the east so the Germans could not bomb it,” he said. “Those huge steelworks go 24 hours a day, and the city is covered in coal dust.
“It’s a spartan place, and the steelworkers there really like the team — hockey is practically the only thing to do. We had great, raucous fans — the atmosphere is like a soccer game, with singing, drumming, flares going off.”
King, who lived with his wife in a modest apartment in Magnitogorsk — “each day was fascinating,” he said, “like a new adventure” — came away with great respect for Russian players in general.
“They have tremendous skill levels,” he said. “And not just Malkin, who was electrifying. Even the fourth block of players on any team could do amazing things skating and stick-handling. They might not have the desire or the physicality to play in the N.H.L., but they all have the skills. The Russian league is definitely the second best in the world.”
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