Things gets worse for goalie Ivan Fedotov again…

You’ve followed the saga: earlier this summer, Philadelphia Flyers goaltender and prospect Ivan Fedotov was arrested by Russian authorities who allege that he evaded military service and illegally broke his contract with CSKA Moscow. He was then sent a remote military base in northern Russia.

There was a sense that Fedotov was being punished for choosing to leave Russia for America. Two months prior to his arrest, on May 7, Fedotov had signed a contract with the Flyers, agreeing on a one-year deal with a $925,000 cap hit because he did not have an existing contract in Russia for next season. The Flyers originally selected him in the 2015 NHL Draft in the seventh round.

He was however detained by the Russian government on a military evasion charge seeing that, in Russia, “all males 18-27 (with rare exceptions) are required to serve one year in the military in some capacity if they are conscripted.”
And it sounds like the team holding his rights, as he belongs to CSKA, is not coming to his aid and prefers to keep him in the army.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has recently revealed that the president of the CSKA Moscow hockey team, Igor Esmantovich, denied reports that his team had been in contract extension discussions with the goalie, who is believed to have taken the military oath in mid-August. There were reports that Fedotov had signed a three-year contract with CSKA to stay in the KHL. The league and the team have since denied that report.

“The head of the club did not meet with Ivan Fedotov, as he serves in the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” Esmantovich said in a press release on the team’s website. “Accordingly, there was no discussion, no contract exists. I would like to appeal to journalists who shamelessly and illiterately try to promote themselves on this, and ask them to stop such speculations.”

This is a lot falling on the goaltender’s shoulders all at once. “Fedotov’s preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 20. [The Russian media outlet] Gazeta reported that Fedotov’s lawyer, Alexei Ponomarev, has challenged his draft commission as illegal,” points out the Inquirer.

Let’s hope things get better for Fedotov. On Tuesday, new Colorado Avalanche netminder Alexander Georgijev revealed to the Czech news site iDnes.cz that he did not travel to Moscow this summer in a fear of what happened to Fedotov.