MOSCOW -- espn.com
Russia's ice hockey chiefs approved on Friday a transfer agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL), ending a long confrontation with their North American counterparts.

Vladislav Tretyak, president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation (RIHF), said his country would soon sign a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the NHL.

"With this agreement we can say we're back as full members of the international hockey community. Common sense has finally prevailed," the former goaltender told a news conference.

Tretyak said the agreement would be formally approved at the RIHF executive board's meeting next week.

Russia had been the only major hockey power not to sign the deal, which was approved by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) last year, calling it unfair.

Russian clubs said they wanted to negotiate their own deals directly with NHL affiliates.

But since being elected Russian hockey chief in April, Tretyak, who has had a successful political career since retiring in 1984, has urged the clubs to ratify the agreement.

"With next year's world championship being held in Russia, we just can't afford our players being banned from international competition," Tretyak said this week upon returning from New York, where he met NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

IIHF president Rene Fasel has warned Russia that if they continued the stand-off they would risk participation of their NHL players in world championship or Olympic competition.

"There is a danger that if we do not find an agreement with Gary Bettman, Russian players will not be allowed to play in Russia next year," Fasel told reporters at last month's world championship in Riga.

Under the new CBA, the NHL and NHL Players Association can prevent a player from taking part in a world championship without a transfer agreement in place.

Political pressure from Russia's hockey-mad president is behind the transfer deal between the NHL and the Russian Ice Hockey Federation.
Sportsnet.ca News

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows a thing or two about working the power play.

Putin is a huge hockey fan and he wants nothing more than to see Russia win the 2007 World Hockey Championship tournament in Moscow.

And the best way to make sure the Russians can assemble a contending team is to have peace with the National Hockey League. And that's the backdrop to why Russia has tentatively agreed to join the NHL-IIHF transfer agreement.

Putin told new Russian Ice Hockey Federation President Vladislav Tretiak that he expects Russia to atop the medal podium at the world tournament next spring. Anything short of wining on home soil will be unacceptable.

Under the new collective agreement, the NHL and NHL Players' Association can prevent a player from taking part in the world championship without a transfer agreement in place. Tretiak knows as well as anyone how the game is played and he went to work to see what he could do to make Putin's wishes happen.

The first thing he did was wrestle control of the Russian National League from team owners, who used to have Alexander Steblin, the former Russian federation president, under their thumb. Steblin resigned after a drunken punch-up with a translator and Tretiak succeeded him.

Tretiak told the owners that the federation was the governing body for hockey in Russia and it was the federation's responsibility to get an umbrella agreement with the NHL.

Club owners had been making noises about wanting instead to negotiate individual agreements with players they lost to the NHL. There were reports that the Russian club team Magnitogorsk wanted $25 million from the Pittsburgh Penguins for Evgeni Malkin, who was the No. 2 pick in the 2004 NHL Draft behind Alexander Ovechkin.

Tretiak knew this would never work and he put the club owners in their place and then dealt with the National Hockey League as the voice for Russian hockey. Tretiak now has a tentative agreement in place on a transfer fee schedule and an official announcement was expected at some point in the next week.

Now all Russian players drafted by NHL clubs will follow the same process as other European prospects, their federations getting compensation in exchange losing players to the NHL.

And that means Malkin could join the Penguins next season without any complications.

And Pittsburgh can thank Putin.

awesome news for the nhl and russia, i cant wait to have malkin in the nhl he should be awesome.