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Updated - Vladimir Sobotka staying in the KHL |
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**UPDATE**
Aivis Kalniņš (@A_Kalnins) confirmed that Sobotka's KHL contract buyout (the part I had been speculating about for weeks) is 2/3rds of his KHL contract which would be in the neighborhood of $2.67 million.
Speculate among yourselves if Sobotka was trying to convince Armstrong to pay for some or all of the buyout. Regardless, I think it is pretty safe to assume that Sobotka won't be paying the price to get out of his KHL contract and thus will be staying in the KHL.
As I said and/or implied before, the fact that Sobotka had said virtually nothing about this over the summer and the fact that he had not actually executed the contract and payments really upped the odds that he wasn't coming back to the NHL.
*PRIOR*
Reports are surfacing this morning that Avangard Omsk announced that Vladimir Sobotka is set to join them for the remainder of his contract and is expected to join the Omsk team tomorrow. Reports are now also saying that the KHL and Central Registry are confirming this as well.
I can't say this will surprise me one bit. As an outsider, this process has seemed to have been handled in a manner that suggests this was a definite possibility.
As I said days ago, if I was Sobotka and wanted to come back to the NHL, you can be sure general manager Doug Armstrong would know exactly what I have done and that I would be including the Blues in my strategy discussion on how to make it happen yet that did not appear to happen. Sobotka's long standing silence until the recent days also was a big red flag that his coming back over may not happen.
Maybe my September 15th #AvangardOmsk tweet regarding Sobotka was very foreshadowing.
Hopefully the Sobotka drama will be over by Friday's preseason game.
Also, for all things KHL I recommend following - Aivis Kalniņš @A_Kalnins on twitter
It’s a great day for hockey.
St Louis Blues Blogger • 
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