{"id":19219,"date":"2013-01-09T15:51:36","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T14:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rt.com\/sport\/hockey\/kovalchuk-nhl-stay-russia-651\/"},"modified":"2013-01-09T15:51:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T14:51:36","slug":"kovalchuk-holds-off-on-returning-to-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/kovalchuk-holds-off-on-returning-to-nhl\/","title":{"rendered":"Kovalchuk holds off on returning to NHL"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rt.com\/files\/sport\/hockey\/kovalchuk-nhl-stay-russia-651\/russian-player-team-hockey.n.jpg\" width=\"370\" height=\"277\" alt=\"Ilya Kovalchuk, player of the Russian national hockey team (RIA Novosti\/Grigoriy Sokolov)\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"VideoDescription\" class=\"grey mv10\">Ilya Kovalchuk, player of the Russian national hockey team (RIA Novosti\/Grigoriy Sokolov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Ilya Kovalchuk will entertain the Chelyabinsk crowd at this weekend&#8217;s KHL All-Star game. The New Jersey star forward has decided to stay in Russia at least until Sunday despite an unofficial end to the NHL lockout.<\/p>\n<p>He was supposed to appear in the Russian Urals city of Chelyabinsk together with other prominent NHLers including the likes of Zdeno Chara, Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeny Malkin and Alex Ovechkin.<\/p>\n<p>But all of them headed to North America for pre-season training soon after Sunday\u2019s talks breakthrough between the NHL and the players association.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Kovalchuk is taking his time. <em>&#8220;Will I stay in Russia? We&#8217;ll see. Time will tell. We shouldn&#8217;t rule it out,&#8221;<\/em> he says.<\/p>\n<p>Last December, the 29 year old was included in the Western Conference All-Stars team, and despite the other All-Stars on contracts with NHL clubs having already been replaced, the KHL pledges Kovalchuk will take part.<\/p>\n<p>Kovalchuk, who has scored 18 goals and made 22 assists in 35 games with conference-leading SKA this season, says that he is fully entitled to stay in Russia because the NHL&#8217;s new collective bargaining agreement has yet to be signed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rt.com\/files\/sport\/hockey\/kovalchuk-nhl-stay-russia-651\/russian-player-team-hockey.n.jpg\" width=\"370\" height=\"277\" alt=\"Ilya Kovalchuk, player of the Russian national hockey team (RIA Novosti\/Grigoriy Sokolov)\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Ilya Kovalchuk, player of the Russian national hockey team (RIA Novosti\/Grigoriy Sokolov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Ilya Kovalchuk will entertain the Chelyabinsk crowd at this weekend&#8217;s KHL All-Star game. The New Jersey star forward has decided to stay in Russia at least until Sunday despite an unofficial end to the NHL lockout.<\/p>\n<p>He was supposed to appear in the Russian Urals city of Chelyabinsk together with other prominent NHLers including the likes of Zdeno Chara, Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeny Malkin and Alex Ovechkin.<\/p>\n<p>But all of them headed to North America for pre-season training soon after Sunday&rsquo;s talks breakthrough between the NHL and the players association.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Kovalchuk is taking his time. <em>&#8220;Will I stay in Russia? We&#8217;ll see. Time will tell. We shouldn&#8217;t rule it out,&#8221;<\/em> he says.<\/p>\n<p>Last December, the 29 year old was included in the Western Conference All-Stars team, and despite the other All-Stars on contracts with NHL clubs having already been replaced, the KHL pledges Kovalchuk will take part.<\/p>\n<p>Kovalchuk, who has scored 18 goals and made 22 assists in 35 games with conference-leading SKA this season, says that he is fully entitled to stay in Russia because the NHL&#8217;s new collective bargaining agreement has yet to be signed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}