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[wakes up, rubs eyes, sees NHL still locked out, gets angry]
*sigh* we're still going to have to track down midday feeds and rely on badly translated news stories to follow the world's best hockey players, aren't we? I'm looking forward to the start of the AHL season, at least.
While the NHL and NHLPA continue to negotiate through the press instead of in private, we turn our eyes to Europe, where the Red Wings have three players in three different leagues taking part in professional hockey games. Let's take a look.
Jakub Kindl
Current Team: HC Pardubice (Czech League)
The Scoop: Kindl's Czech League club lost their Sunday against HC Mountfield 3-2. Kindl went -2 for the match and was named player of the game. Kindl joked on Twitter about the rarity of such an event happening. Our commenter, Kyllönen described his play as more physical than his teammates, but not the standout performance expected of an NHLer.
Next Game: Pardubice plays again on Wednesday at 6:15 Prague time (12:15 Eastern). Kindl's side will be bolstered by the addition of Edmonton Oilers forward Ales Hemsky. The opposition side (HC Kladno) is Jaromir Jagr's team and includes a handful of recognizable names like Tomas Kaberle, Tomas Plekanec, and Marek Zidlicky. They should offer quite the challenge for Kindl.
Valtteri Filppula
Current Team: Jokerit Helsinki (SM-Liiga, Finland)
The Scoop: Filppula the younger played his Finnish league debut for Jokerit and notched an assist on his brother Ilari's first period goal. Unfortunately, Flip's team fell to their opponent SaiPa 4-3. Also of note, Detroit prospect Teemu Pulkkinen plays for Jokerit. Pulkkinen didn't factor into the scoring, but he did take a 2nd period penalty.
Next Game: Jokerit plays again at home against Ilves at 11:30EST on Thursday, as well as a Saturday game against HPK at 10:00EST Ilves doesn't have any NHLers to my knowledge, but their roster no doubt is just chock full of umlauts.
Pavel Datsyuk
Current Team: CSKA Moscow (KHL)
The Scoop: Datsyuk played 18:07 in his first KHL game against Avangard Omsk in Monday's 1-0 CSKA victory. As we covered then, Datsyuk didn't get on the scoreboard, but he did head the puck into the net once. I was able to watch some of this game. Datsyuk looked more comfortable as the match progressed, but is still working into form.
Next Game: CSKA plays again on Thursday at 5:00pm local time (9:00am EST), this time against Traktor Chelyabinsk. Datsyuk's teammate and team captain Alex Radulov can get reacquainted with his teammate-for-a-few-weeks Andrei Kostitsyn, who is playing for Traktor.