According to Renaud Lavoie of RDS, The Leafs are expected to announce that goaltending coach François Allaire will not return to the club this season. Allaire was brought to Toronto by GM Brian Burke in 2009 after working with him in Anaheim and faced stinging criticism in the Toronto media for the inconsistent play of Toronto's netminders, including struggles in philosophy with the now departed Jonas Gustavsson.
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The mass exodus of primarily Russian players continued over the weekend, as Evgeni Malkin, Sergei Gonchar and Maple Leafs winger Nikolai Kulemin signed on with Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the KHL.
This morning, Yahoo's Dmitry Chesnokov(who is the go-to man for any hockey news from Mother Russia) indicated that Washington Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin is talking with Moscow Dynamo and Devils winger Ilya Kovalchuk is about to sign with SKA in the next few days.
There have been sporadic reports of European players like Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec and Canes winger Jussi Jokinen going to play in their home countries, but to this point, no prominent North American players have made the jump.
This simply could be the fact that the European players are taking advantage of prior relationships to stay playing and keep the money flowing or it could be a sign that the situation is not so desperate that Canadian and American players are willing to pick up stakes and move halfway across the world for a couple months of inactivivty.
While Leafs winger Joffrey Lupul talked openly of the possiblity of going to Europe if the lockout drags on, the only North American players rumored to be seriously considering the move are Sharks' center Joe Thornton and Rangers winger Rick Nash, but there cases are unusual.
Thornton and Nash played for HC Davos of the Swiss National League A during the 2004-05 lockout. Thornton met his wife there and every summer trains with Davos before heading back for the NHL season.
Hockey scribe Howard Berger reported the viewpoint of a veteran NHL executive that players defecting early does not speak well for the supposed new unity of the Player's Association under Donald Fehr. (http://www.bergerbytes.ca/2012/09/nhl-players-undermining-their-cause/)
The executive stated that if there was anything to the show of soldarity, that the players would have stayed in North America for a time to see how things played out, instead of scrambling for open jobs in the KHL when the music stopped.
“Let ‘em go,” howled the executive, instantly recognizable to all hockey fans but requesting – as he must – anonymity. “The players think they are threatening the owners by signing contracts in Europe. In fact, what they’re showing is they don’t have a lot of stomach to remain together in this fight. And that’s what we expected.”
Do you agree with the executive's analysis and that these departures are a sign that a lack of unity will lead to a shorter than expected lockout or do you think that players leaving means that this is going to be a long, drawn out fight?
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