The KHL will have to wait until Pavel Datsyuk is 40 if it wants him as a marquee star. (Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Pavel Datsyuk may have been speaking from the heart when he talked about how much fun he had playing back home in Russia during the lockout. “This is my goal [to end my career in the KHL], but you never know how it goes,” he said. “I would love to finish there, give back to my friends and fans in Russia [while] I hope I’ll be in good shape.”

But by the end of the season, he was coming from a much more pragmatic place when he voiced a wish to stay in Detroit. “Yeah, I hope we sign a new deal. I hope we agree and I sign for more [years],” he said as the Red Wings cleaned out their lockers.

And so it was no surprise when Datsyuk tweeted today that he’d come to terms on a three-year extension that will earn him $23 million and keep him with the Wings through the 2016-17 season.

It’s a win for both sides. Datsyuk will be paid $10 million the first year, $7.5 million the second, and $5.5 million the third, with a cap hit of $7.5 million that’s more than manageable for Wings and a fair payday for a player who led the team in scoring this past season. Big smiles all around.

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Patrice Bergeron, Jonathan Toews and Pavel Datsyuk make the Selke a highly contested award. (Icon SMI (2); Getty)

By Allan Muir

The league announced today that Boston’s Patrice Bergeron, Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk, and Chicago’s Jonathan Toews are the three finalists for the 2012-13 Frank J. Selke Trophy, which is awarded “to the forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game.”

Nary a “knock me over with a feather” nominee in that bunch. The Selke has taken a few hits over the years as being a reputation-based award, but this trio burnished their well-established reps for two-way excellence with undeniably strong seasons.

When the vote counts are revealed, it won’t be a surprise to learn this was the year’s most hotly contested hardware. You can’t make an argument against any of these guys.

MORE NOMINEES: Hart | Norris | Vezina | Calder | Lindsay | Masterton

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Nail Yakupov channeled Theo Fleury in his tying goal against the Kings back in January. (Andy Devlin/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

I always have the best intentions at the beginning of each season to make a running tab of the moments most worth remembering. And, much like my determination to get back into game shape, it hasn’t happened yet.

Still, it wasn’t too hard to come up with a list now that we’re at season’s end. The games offered enough highlights–and lowlights–to fill a full-length schedule. Here are my favorites:

The Yakupov Slide: With the goalie pulled and Edmonton trailing Los Angeles by one back in January, Nail Yakupov crafted the signature moment of his rookie season: batting a Taylor Hall rebound out of midair and putting it behind Kings goalie Jonathan Quick with just 4.7 seconds left on the clock. He took a lot of grief for his spontaneous Theo Fleury impression, but it was a beautiful tally at a key moment. That’s exactly the kind of goal that calls for an over-the-top celly (yep, celly). You want to follow a sport that’s had all the life sucked out of it? Watch the NFL.

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Pavel Datsyuk has been known to pull off a dangle or two in his time, and tonight’s move only adds to the Wings’ star’s repetoire. (Matt Kartozian/US Presswire)

By Allan Muir

Here are a couple of knee-buckling displays of skill from Thursday night’s action that you cannot afford to miss.

First up, Philly’s Claude Giroux channels Pavel Datsyuk in the shootout. A point earned in the extra-time loss to the Islanders tonight won’t do the struggling Flyers much good, so Giroux probably won’t give this absolutely sick deke a second thought. But geez, you have to feel for Evgeni Nabokov, who bit so hard on that move he’d probably still be sliding left if he hadn’t run into the post.

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Remember when Vince Vaughn thought Jeremy Roenick was good? Wait’ll he gets a load of Pavel Datsyuk, NHL ’94-style.

This year has been a trying one for the Flyers, who might be looking at a premium draft spot come season’s end. (Eric Hartline/US Presswire)

A notated guide to this morning’s must-read hockey stories:

• Heading into Friday’s game with the Devils, the Flyers had an equal statistical chance to finish 29th overall as make the playoffs. That was until a rare shootout win took Seth Jones off their minds…at least temporarily.

• No doubt the vote of confidence GM Paul Holmgren gave coach Peter Laviolette was a great source of relief and comfort for all involved.

• Those Jarome Iginla to the Los Angeles Kings rumors don’t sit well with Eric Duhatschek.

• NHL owners will never pass on the lucre of an 82-game season, but let’s face it: this 48-game sked is pretty boss, isn’t it? The players of the Minnesota Wild seem to agree.

• Roberto Luongo reclaims the No. 1 job in Vancouver, making his third consecutive start tonight against the Red Wings. Coach Alain Vigneault has to go with the guy who is winning more games, and that’s Bobby Lu.

• If the Canucks watched the Wings Friday night, they learned it takes more than a 40-minute effort to beat them. The Oilers had the drop on them early, but the more experienced Wings stuck around long enough to capitalize on an own goal and a brilliant Pavel Datsyuk bid in OT to steal two points.

• Brent Burns has two goals in two games since being bumped from the blue line to Joe Thornton’s line. The erstwhile defender doesn’t see why a big deal is being made of the switch, but hey, versatility like that is pretty unique in the game today.

• In the midst of a disappointing season, defending Vezina winner Henrik Lundqvist is working on becoming a better puck distributor to help out his struggling blue line.

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For sheer entertainment value, there’s Pavel Datsyuk and there’s everyone else.

The Red Wings’ ace was at it again Tuesday night in Nashville, authoring a breakneck end-to-end rush that left five professional hockey players looking like befuddled pee wees before blowing up Pekka Rinne with a slick, in-tight move.

No need to get all wordy about this one. Just watch and enjoy.

By Allan Muir

Good grief. Pasha was at it again this afternoon, this time leaving a quintet of Los Angeles Kings’ defenders to bathe in the red light of shame as they picked up the paraphernalia they shed watching him skate through, by and around them.

The Red Wings were on a power play just over five minutes into the opening frame at Joe Louis this afternoon when Henrik Zetterberg found Datsyuk cutting through the middle. A couple of knee-breaking dekes later, he whips a wrister high glove past Jonathan Quick.

If you bought a ticket to this one, Datsyuk gave you your money’s worth early. The rest is all gravy.

Together again: Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin played their first game together as Dynamo Moscow teammates on Oct. 22. (Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Let’s take a break from lockout news — or non-news — and skate around to where hockey is actually being played.

Attendance is apparently booming in the KHL with the arrival of so many locked out NHL players. And as the impasse continues, another wave of players signing contracts with European clubs seems possible.

One of the most intriguing KHL signings was by Alex Ovechkin’s Dynamo Moscow on Monday:  Ovie’s center on the Washington Capitals, Nicklas Backstrom. In fact, it was Ovechkin who recruited Backstrom by phoning him regularly to urge him to sign with Dynamo.

Here’s a photo of Ovie and Backie at the Dynamo offices from Allhockey.ru with Backstrom dressed in a Dynamo shirt.

Their old chemistry paid off immediately on Monday against Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, won 3-0 by Dynamo, with Backstrom setting up Ovechkin for a power play goal.

That contest matched the top two teams in the KHL’s Western Conference. Dynamo led the Bobrov Division by two points over Ilya Kovalchuk’s SKA St. Petersburg club coming into this game while the rebuilt Loko sat atop the Tarasov Division, three points ahead of CSKA (the Red Army club, with Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Radulov and Ilya Bryzgalov).

Backstrom caused something of a stir when he chose to wear 99 as his jersey number, which hockey fans always associate with Wayne Gretzky. Unlike the NHL, the KHL has not retired that number and, as Backstrom told Sovietsky Sport, he selected it “Because I had a 9 in my 19 and 19 was taken and then I didn’t like the other numbers so 99 was the only one.”

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After losing out to the Wild in the free agent sweepstakes, the aging Red Wings may be forced to fill holes by relying on younger players, such as blueliner Brendan Smith, next season. (Photo by Dave Reginek/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

When free agents Zach Parise and Ryan Suter surprisingly signed with Minnesota last week, Al Muir wrote on SI.com how the two stars suddenly made the Wild relevant. I noted the ramifications for their former clubs, the Devils and Predators respectively. But the duo’s decision had a huge impact on another franchise:  the Detroit Red Wings.

Of the teams in the hunt for the two premier free agents, the Wings were considered their most likely destination and may have been most adversely affected by failing to land even one. The Flyers, Penguins and Blackhawks were in the running, but they all still have good young cores of talent, including some of the NHL’s top superstars. You can’t say that about the Red Wings’ roster now, as talented as it may be. With the exception of goalie Jimmy Howard and forward Valtteri Filppula, Detroit’s best players are all over 30 years old and the team lost its top defenseman, future Hall of Famer Nick Lidstrom, to retirement. Injecting a pair of elite 27-year-olds like Parise and Suter into the lineup would have mattered greatly.

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