Marcus Nilson bolting for KHL?

From Five Hole Fanatics:

*ITEM! The ongoing Marcus Nilson drama continues. According to a Swedish Newspaper, Nilson is preparing to sign with CSKA Moskow of the KHL. Here’s the google translation for those of you not fluent in Swedish:

Can leave the NHL for Russia

NHL-proffset Marcus Nilson to be the next American in KHL.

He is practicing right now with CSKA Moscow and the team’s website claims that Nilson is ready for the club.

Marcus Nilson, 30, is currently on a visit to Russia. He wants to test life in Russia and see if the country is something for him to continue hockeykarriären in.

But the situation is complex.

He belong to the Calgary Flames and has a year left on the contract. But the Flames will not bring any significant dose of an ice age (wont get much ice time as a Flame? – ed) to the Nilson next season and the break has been on the road a long time.

CSKA Moscow, which Nilson trained with, and Lokomotiv Jaroslav, Johan Åkerman club, has appeared as potential employers for Nilson.

According to CSKA’s home page has now Nilson decided to CSKA.

There he will be American number three since Mikael Wahlberg and Mika Hannula already exist in the classic armeklubben, who won 32 championships in the old Soviet Union.
Italics, interpretation and bold added by me.

I’m no CBA expert, but I assume that if Nilson decides to not report to training camp, the Flames can suspend his contract (and cap-hit) for the year. That shaves $1M for the approximate 3M the Flames need to dump prior to October 9, so good news.

Read the entire entry here.

The Flames should be happy if Nilson heads to Russia.  The way he played last season, he would not be hard to replace and it would save them some cash.