It was just last week that I warned that Russia's nascent Kontinental Hockey League represented a legitimate threat to the way that the NHL did business.

Now, here we are just a week later, and the brewing competition between the leagues over hockey talent -- in particular Russian-born talent -- is threatening to escalate into a full-scale war.

Click here to find out more!
First, we ought to recap what's happened since last week's column.

On July 15, the NHL and the KHL announced that the leagues had come to an interim agreement to respect one another's contracts -- an arrangement that would seem to indicate that the deal winger Alexander Radulov signed with Salavat Yulaev Ufa while under contract with the Nashville Predators would be null and void. But that's not the understanding of KHL president Alexander Medvedev, who told everyone willing to listen that Radulov's deal with the last champions of the Russian Super League would stand because it was signed well before the NHL and KHL completed the latest agreement.

A couple of days later, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced that six players, including Radulov, would be suspended from international play pending an investigation into their status -- an announcement that was responded to in kind by the KHL, which reiterated its intention to allow Radulov to play this season. The KHL statement was quickly followed by another issued by NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly, who protested the IIHF's action, writing that it had "no basis in law or fact" in the absence of a player transfer agreement between the NHL and KHL.

Meanwhile, Radulov is acting a lot like a player who knows he'll be spending next season in Russia. He has already started training camp with Salavat Ulaef in Finland.

So what happens next, and what options does the NHL have? For some answers, I picked up the phone and called an old blogging friend, sports law expert Michael McCann. McCann is scheduled to teach next semester at Boston College Law School before taking up a full-time position at Vermont Law School. Better yet, he's the founder of Sports Law Blog and is the in-house legal expert at SI.com.

According to McCann, the Predators could sue Salavat and the KHL for contractual interference in the U.S. courts, where the team would have a "very strong claim that their rights were infringed in an intentional way," a notion that would have to be reinforced by the fact that the KHL has announced that players signed away from the NHL who were under contract wouldn't count against the league's salary cap.

But the problems would start for the Predators and the NHL when they went looking for a Russian authority to enforce their claim. The Russian political system is more or less 100 percent behind the activities of the KHL, and any Russian judge who decided to prevail against the KHL would find it to be a "really unpopular move," McCann told me.

"U.S. courts can say whatever they want, but it takes two to tango ... If the Russian courts or other authorities aren't enforicng our civil judgments, they become meaningless," McCann said. "There's no point in sanctioning leagues in Russia. It's going to be difficult to get the player back through legal channels. The only way to do it would be for the NHL to come to an agreement with the KHL -- and that's not on the horizon."

But where our conversation got a little more interesting is when we began to look down the road a few more years -- something that I believe too many North American observers of this story have neglected to do. For the most part, those who have tried to discount the impact of the KHL on the NHL's operations have looked only at the near-term implications. But as I noted last week, teams like Salavat, Ska St. Petersburg and Lokomotiv aren't the weak sisters many WHA franchises were. Instead, they're established brands with growing international followings.

Here in Washington, it was hard not to notice the sprinkling of sweaters from KHL teams appearing in the crowd during the Washington Capitals' development camp earlier this month. Moreover, two of the most popular T-shirts you'll find in the pro shop at the team's training facility are ones embossed with the names of Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin -- with their names spelled in Russian.

The real trouble could start if fewer Russian prospects make their way to North America and more European talent opts to play in the expanded KHL. "Perhaps a trend of players going to another league [could reinforce the notion that] the NHL isn't the premier hockey league on earth ... The more and more we're seeing this, it reinforces the impression it isn't the best in the world," McCann said.

What's worse, McCann added, is that competition for players -- especially those who make up a disproportionate number of the league's most skilled players -- could drive up the cost of doing business and force NHL owners to re-evaluate their priorities. Essentially, McCann said, NHL owners may well conclude that they'll be forced to spend more for players or be forced to put an "inferior product" on the ice.

If that comes to pass, McCann said that we shouldn't be surprised if a growing number of NHL owners look to put their teams on the market.

And as for those who charge that most talented North Americans would always choose to stay home and play in Canadian juniors or the NCAA, it might be high time to think again. Four years ago, I interviewed a player agent who represented a number of American basketball players in Europe. At the time, I asked him if there was a chance that the European professional leagues might eventually offer an alternate development path for American players who would normally opt for at least a few years in the NCAA.

At the time, he told me no, and that the cultural gap was probably too wide for an 18-year-old American kid to bridge. Yet just last week, one of the top American high school basketball prospects, Arizona recruit Brandon Jennings, opted to play at least a year in Europe for Virtus Roma. And that's a year he won't have to worry about dealing with NCAA investigations just because he wants to make sure he gets paid for what he believes he's worth.

But Jennings isn't the only American to have opted to ply his or her trade in Europe. For years, American female basketball players like Diana Taurasi have opted to play for big bucks in Europe when the WNBA isn't in session. And Europe is still the optimal destination for the top men's talent in American soccer, with young players like Freddy Adu, Jozy Altidore and Jonathan Spector eschewing a life in MLS for a chance to compete in Europe at the sport's highest levels.

There was one point that McCann and I couldn't agree with more -- and that's the impression that the longer the dispute between the KHL and NHL persists, the more likely the KHL will obtain greater and greater leverage in their negotiations if more European players choose to stay home. What's worse, if the KHL follows through on plans to expand throughout Europe, it could very well turn out to be a rather attractive destination -- even if only temporarily -- for top North American hockey talent.

Laugh if you must. The KHL and the threat it represents are no joke.