- Nikishin’s Russian agent says NHL clubs are ready to take him and Carolina is the one saying no
- Alexander Chernykh also shut down the idea of his client going back to the KHL
- Read below for the full exchange and where the contract standoff sits with camp underway
Alexander Nikishin’s camp is done keeping this one polite.
Nikishin’s Russian agent, Alexander Chernykh, was asked by Match TV’s Pavel Lysenkov how many NHL clubs actually want his client. He put the holdup on one desk.
“Right now the main issue is Carolina. Many are ready to get Nikishin. But Carolina refuses. It is a situation familiar from the KHL: a player wants to move to another team, but the club will not let him go.”
Chernykh said clubs willing to sign Nikishin have already been found, and that everything else waits on the Hurricanes.
The interview followed Pierre LeBrun’s report in The Athletic that Nikishin asked for a trade at the end of last season and that the request has not gone anywhere:
Lysenkov asked whether a KHL return was on the table, the way Alexei Yashin and Ilya Kovalchuk went home during old contract fights. Chernykh killed it.
“No. He is not even close to planning a return. We will keep working, he is not going back. Are we surrendering, or what? The guys are working. We are not panicking. Alexander will be in America and wait for his situation to be resolved.”
His agent added one more reason the family is staying put. Nikishin’s wife is due to give birth soon.
Nikishin is 24 and coming off a rookie year most Carolina defensemen never touch. Our own look at the numbers when the trade request went public covers why teams keep calling:
That is 33 points in 81 games, 11 goals and 22 assists at plus-18, a spot on the NHL All-Rookie Team, then 17 playoff games and a Stanley Cup. His two-year deal carried a $925,000 cap hit and expired this summer, which is how a Cup-winning defenseman ended up an unsigned restricted free agent.
Interest has been there since June, when Darren Dreger put a number on it:
Nashville has been one of the teams kicking the tires, and the ask is where it keeps stalling. The belief around the league is that he wants a bigger role than Carolina’s left side gives him, at a number the Hurricanes cannot fit.
Hurricanes camp opened Thursday without him, with GM Eric Tulsky saying there is no agreement in place. Two of the three parties in this thing are talking publicly now. Carolina is not one of them.
