Ivan Fedotov joined the NHL club Philadelphia

Goalkeeper Ivan Fedotov, who had just left the KHL club CSKA, had the opportunity to finish the current season in the NHL. He joined the Philadelphia Flyers club, Fedotov’s contract with which resulted in one of the most scandalous stories of recent years in Russian hockey. Philadelphia has a good chance of making it to the playoffs, but the goaltending line is a problem for them.

The official NHL website reported that Russian goalkeeper Ivan Fedotov has joined the Philadelphia Flyers. The day before, CSKA announced the termination of the contract with him.

In fact, Fedotov signed a contract with Philadelphia back in May 2022 after a season that sharply increased his ratings.

It turned out brilliant for the goalkeeper. Largely thanks to Fedotov, the Russian team won silver at the Beijing Olympics, and CSKA won the Gagarin Cup.

However, instead of leaving for the NHL, Ivan Fedotov’s career took an unexpected turn. He never managed to fly to North America. In the summer of 2022, he was detained by military registration and enlistment office employees in St. Petersburg, and the athlete went to serve in the army. After finishing his service, Fedotov, instead of leaving for the USA, where he was still expected, signed a contract with CSKA. This caused protests from the North American side. It turned out that Philadelphia “postponed” the contract with Fedotov to the next season, believing that the goalkeeper’s absence from the previous season was caused by force majeure. And NHL leaders even equated what happened to a complete rejection of the 2010 Memorandum of Understanding. This document, in essence, declared recognition of each other’s contracts by both the American and domestic leagues.

As a result, a situation arose in which neither side could influence the opponent in any way. Even the intervention of the International Hockey Federation (IIHF) did not help: it refused to register CSKA’s contract with the goalkeeper, and disqualified the hockey player himself for four months. At the same time, CSKA was banned from international transfers for a period of one year. But despite this, the KHL allowed Fedotov to compete in the next championship.

However, he did not spend the season very well. Just like CSKA as a whole: the army team was eliminated from the Gagarin Cup in the first round after losing to Lokomotiv.

Ivan Fedotov can sweeten it with a game in the NHL championship.

“Philadelphia has the right to use the Russian in the next matches of the regular season: it still has eight games before his end on the calendar.

At the same time, the Philadelphians retain a good chance of making it into the Stanley Cup. They are currently in the playoff zone, sitting in third place in the Metropolitan Division, and even have a small margin of safety.

It is important that the goalkeeper position looks problematic for the club. He lost his main goalkeeper Carter Hart in January, also for scandalous reasons. Hart was one of several professional Canadian hockey players involved in a high-profile sexual assault case. At the moment, Philadelphia’s number one is the not very experienced and reliable Samuel Ersson.

Alexey Dospehov