Andy Potts

The truce which broke out between Russia's Continental Hockey League and the NHL already seems to be on thin ice.

Despite an amicable agreement being reached in a contract dispute between SKA St. Petersburg and Atlanta Thrashers over Canadian defender Joel Kwiatkowski, a string of other disputes is set to threaten the fragile peace.

Flashpoint number one is due to be resolved on July 30, when Dinamo Moscow's exciting new signing, Jiri Hudler, faces a hearing in Detroit to determine whether he is still under contract to the Red Wings.

Meanwhile, CSKA Moscow have flown to Finland without Denis Parshin and Sergei Shirokov, who are waiting to hear whether they will be allowed to take up contracts in the NHL.

And Traktor Chelyabinsk are plotting legal action over the transfer of their winger Yevgeny Dadonov to Florida Panthers, claiming $500,000 in compensation for the 20-year-old.

In Detroit, the Red Wings claim that Hudler, 25, is still their player since he initiated salary negotiations before agreeing a switch to Moscow. That makes him a "restricted free agent" under hockey rules, complicating any bid to take him to another club in a sport where soccer-style transfer fees are seldom used to sign players.

The Czech insisted he wants to come to Russia and "be a leader", telling Sport Express that he hoped for more playing time in the KHL.

But others suspect the prospect of a two-year contract worth up to $10 million - something with which the salary-capped NHL cannot compete - is the bottom line, and rumours in the Motor City suggest that the Red Wings are already looking at replacements for Hudler.

With CSKA the situation is slightly different. Their two young stars reached the end of their contracts in the spring, but received offers of extensions from the club.

At the same time they were linked with moves to Colorado and Vancouver, which both club and league have sought to block. The hockey players' union has refused to get involved in the dispute, while arbitration talks have yet to bring a solution.

Now the players have skipped pre-season training with the Red and Blues, staying at home while the squad travels to a warm-up camp in Finland this week.

Hockey has traditionally avoided a transfer market where players can be bought out of their contracts, with NHL and KHL directors arguing that this allows clubs to develop talented players over time.

But the Gazprom-backed KHL's emergence as a genuine financial rival to the NHL's long-standing dominance of the sport has strained relations between clubs in Russia and North America.

And the situation is further complicated by the NHL's decision to operate outside the framework of the global governing body, the International Ice Hockey Federation, making it harder to apply contract rules across the board.