Goaltender Alexei Kolosov has had a bumpy road on his journey from Dinamo Minsk in the KHL to the Philadelphia Flyers organization, and with recent reports coming out of Belarus, the plot only looks to be thickening.
Goaltender Alexei Kolosov has had a bumpy road on his journey from Dinamo Minsk in the KHL to the Philadelphia Flyers organization, and with recent reports coming out of Belarus, the plot only looks to be thickening.
Goaltender Alexei Kolosov has had a bumpy road on his journey from Dinamo Minsk in the KHL to the Philadelphia Flyers organization, and with recent reports coming out of Belarus, the plot only looks to be thickening.
According to reports from his native Belarus, Kolosov wishes to return to the KHL and has been participating in training sessions with his former team, Dinamo Minsk, over the summer.
But to understand how Kolosov ended up back in Belarus after being assigned to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms earlier this year, let's take it back to when he first landed stateside.
Kolosov followed shortly after current Flyers goalie Ivan Fedotov's surprise arrival in Philadelphia, coming in around midnight after Dinamo Minsk confirmed he had left the club to pursue a career in the NHL on March 26.
The plan from the beginning seemed to be that Kolosov would start in the AHL with the Phantoms before hopefully working his way up to the top level.
The 22-year-old played just two games with the Phantoms before rumors began circulating that Kolosov was feeling homesick and not adjusting well to North American hockey. This led some to believe that he would try to wriggle out of his newly signed entry-level contract to stay in the KHL.
A young, foreign player having to acclimate to a drastically different league and country isn't a new phenomenon. Still, the story really took on a life of its own after the Flyers dropped their roster for development camp (which ran from July 2-6), and Kolosov was nowhere to be seen.
Several different theories were being thrown around to try and explain Kolosov's absence—ranging from him encountering visa issues to him straight-up refusing to come back to the U.S. for camp—but Belarusian journalist Ivan Bogun reported that the goaltender had every intention of flying back to the States on June 20, but didn't seem to have set his alarm clock the night before.
"He was supposed to fly to Pennsylvania on June 20...but 'completely by accident,' he overslept and missed the flight and remained in Belarus," Bogun said.
With the Flyers' rookie and main camps approaching, speculation is growing on whether Kolosov will be there. While the Flyers' front office has stated that they fully expect their goalie prospect to honor his contract and report to camp, if the reports from Belarus hold any amount of truth, things could get complicated.
"To sign a rookie contract, only to run home a couple of months later and refuse to return to Philadelphia, is, of course, the height of infantilism," Bogun added in his report. "I heard that the goalie has already asked the Minsk management to do everything to help him resolve the issue of terminating his contract in the NHL...Now it will be interesting how the Minsk team will resolve Kolosov's request."
It's important to note that as of publication, Kolosov is still under contract with the Flyers, so unless an alternative solution is reached between the two camps, he is not legally able to return to the KHL this season.
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