- Dynamo Moscow spent the summer trying to borrow Hurricanes prospect Ivan Ryabkin and got turned away
- Bill Daly confirmed NHL clubs are not allowed to negotiate with KHL teams
- Read below for what Dynamo’s sports director said and where Ryabkin reports now
Dynamo Moscow spent the summer trying to get Ivan Ryabkin back. The NHL is the reason it never happened.
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed to RIA Novosti that NHL clubs are not permitted to negotiate with KHL clubs. Asked point blank whether the restriction was real, he said “Yes, that’s right.” It applies to all 32 teams, so this was never a call the Carolina Hurricanes made on their own.
Ryabkin had made his own preference clear. Dynamo sports director Alexei Badyukov described a long sit-down with the 19-year-old and head coach Leonid Tambiev once the AHL playoffs ended.
Badyukov was asked how those talks went:
“When he came back after the AHL playoffs, he expressed a desire to return to his home club. Tambiev and I talked with him for an hour and a half. He really wanted to play for Dynamo, but Carolina did not loan him out. They were not against him training with us, but that did not suit us.”
Alexei Badyukov, via Sport-Express
Summer skates in Moscow were the most Carolina could offer. A report in July had Ryabkin going back to Dynamo outright, and it hung around for weeks:
None of this is new policy. The NHL suspended its memorandum of understanding with the KHL in March 2022 and told its clubs to cut off contact with KHL teams and Russia-based agents. That directive still governs these conversations four years later.
Players without an NHL contract can go whenever they want, which is how Nikita Alexandrov ended up KHL-bound this month. Ryabkin signed a three-year entry-level deal with Carolina last August, and that is a different thing entirely.
The Hurricanes took him 62nd overall in 2025 off a monster year in Muskegon, where he put up 30 points in 27 USHL games and won the league title. Watch what he can do with the puck:
His first pro season started rough. One goal and six assists in 25 games with the AHL’s Chicago Wolves bought him a 20-game reassignment to Charlottetown of the QMJHL.
He came back a different player. Nine points in 21 playoff games, four of them goals, and the biggest one sent Chicago to the Calder Cup Final.
With 7:10 left in the third period of Game 7 in Colorado, Ryabkin buried a Domenick Fensore rebound to make it 4-2. Here are the highlights:
So Ryabkin trained in Moscow all summer and now reports to Carolina’s camp anyway. The KHL season opens Sept. 5 without him.
