Coyotes’ Viktor Tikhonov follows Filatov’s route, leaves NHL for KHL (Photo © khl.ru)
Phoenix Coyotes’ Viktor Tikhonov, who spent most of the season with their AHL affiliates, the San Antonio Rampage, is back in Moscow, as seen on the photo, where he’s thought to be joining Filatov’s CSKA.
“My son has been sent to the KHL, he has already landed in Moscow and he’s ready to play for CSKA” – said Tikhonov’s father, Vasily Tikhonov, to Sovetsky Sport. “The only problem is that the league is investigating where his rights belong to. He left the NHL playing for Severstal Cherepovets, but that was two years ago”.
If his rights will be cleared property of the Cherepovets team CSKA will have to give some compensation to them, most likely being it a couple of picks for the next KHL draft.
The 21 years old forward is thus going to join Filatov’s team, but it’s unlikely that the two will play together as Filatov found excellent chemistry iced with veteran Albert Leschev and Dmitry Monya.
Tikhonov has been spotted on the stands of the local derby between Spartak and CSKA, watching at the match side-to-side with his grandfather Viktor Tikhonov, legendary coach of the Soviet National Team when it was on the top of the world.
Even if CSKA hasn’t officially declared to have signed the young, dynamic forward, it’s believed that he will start playing for the Red Army in the next few days, giving another needed boos to the team’s attack as they were struggling since the start after changing a lot of players and appointing a new head coach, Sergei Nemchinov, this summer.