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<\/p>\nSince the 1980s, the Russian government has taken umbrage with Soviet hockey players defecting to the NHL. Whether it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s minister of defense threatening internal\u00a0exile of Red Army National team star Viacheslav \u201cSlava\u201d Fetisov or the creation of the government influenced\u00a0KHL,\u00a0the Russkies have always endeavored to prevent their native sons from seeking the glory of playing for the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n
Now, The New York Rangers Blog has received leaked documentation of a possible new\u00a0Russian scheme.<\/p>\n
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Yes, that my friends is a photo of a younger Alain Vigneault palling around with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
You see, Putin is notoriously known for being the\u00a0most hockey crazed of all the Russian dictators, so it’s no surprise that he’d seek to infiltrate the NHL to win back his former comrades.<\/p>\n
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Obviously, a photo of the Rangers head coach conversing with\u00a0the Russian President isn’t enough to prove potential international espionage, however, based on the 30,000 e-mails\u00a0my friend at WikiLeaks was able to uncover from Vigneault’s private home server, there’s\u00a0reason to believe AV is in fact a Putin puppet placed in the NHL\u00a0to persuade Pavel Buchnevich to return to the former Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
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While I have been unable to authenticate the above e-mail, FBI wiretaps of Russian Ambassador\u00a0Sergey Kislyak have uncovered some additional mischief.<\/p>\n
Apparently, last offseason Vigneault strongly advocated for the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers to hire Ulf Samuelsson as their new head coach to get him out of the Rangers organization ahead of Buchnevich arriving in New York. According to the FBI, during Samuelsson’s\u00a0time coaching in the Swedish Elite League, he earned\u00a0a reputation of favoring Russian players and Vigneault was concerned his assistant coach would have a comforting\u00a0affect on Buchnevich.<\/p>\n
Sure, this all seems like incriminating evidence, but where’s the smoking gun? Yes, AV has healthy scratched\u00a0Buchnevich a few games and even demoted him to the AHL, but for the most part he’s been a mainstay in the line-up this season.\u00a0So until I see Vigneault do the unimaginable\u00a0and play Tanner Glass over Buchnevich, I’ll just assume this is nothing more than Russian propaganda aimed to distract us from the failing KHL.<\/p>\n[protected-iframe id=”48b48a72554adbe67d602464c40ebc1a-114320562-46273279″ info=”\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js” class=”twitter-tweet”]\n
Oh. My. God.<\/p>\n
Remember to follow me on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0& Instagram<\/a> or e-mail me at\u00a0nyrfan94@yahoo.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since the 1980s, the Russian government has taken umbrage with Soviet hockey players defecting to the NHL. Whether it was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":643880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[355571625],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n