KHL star Okulov turns his back on both the Leafs and Habs

This just in from Russian hockey insider Igor Eronko, 25 year old forward Konstantin Okulov has turned down contract offers from the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens in favour of re-signing a one year deal with CSKA Moscow of the KHL.

Check it out:

The 25 year old forward put up 17 goals and 38 points in 56 games with CSKA Moscow last season and drew interest from several NHL teams before ultimately re-upping in Russia.

“I think he’s one of the most skilled guys on our team, maybe even in the league,” Okulov’s CSKA teammate and former NHLer Linden Vey said in an interview with The Athletic. “He’s really good at carrying the puck, very shifty, and a good goal scorer. It’s so hard to know how things would translate because the game is so different from here to North America, but he’s got all the tools to be a good player.”

“Bigger ice, it’s such a defensive game over here, teams just sit back, so it tends to not have the speed of the NHL,” Vey said. “The NHL is such a fast league now. Here it’s more set breakouts, set forechecks, all that stuff, where you’re always coming back and you have to beat four or five guys every time. It’s not that quick up, fast pace that the NHL has, so that’s why I think it’s so hard to judge what people will do going to North America.”

But, just because Okulov is staying in Russia for another year, don’t count out the NHL in his future.

Stay tuned, Leafs and Habs fans.