The Russian Hockey Super League races into the homestretch this week, when Lokomotiv Yaroslavl takes on regular season winner Salavat Yulayev of Ufa. Loko clinched its first final in five years thanks in part to the performance of acquisition Alexei Yashin, who signed a one-year deal last season, and whose arrival was greeted with great excitement by the Russian hockey world.

Here was one of Russia's top players, a star originally from Yekaterin-burg who went to the NHL, and whose career was by no means washed up, agreeing to come back to his homeland. This even though he left behind probably more money, and disadvantaged his parents, who now live in Canada, and his girlfriend, former supermodel Carol Alt, in New York.

It signaled that the league, just as it was preparing to revamp itself into a serious challenger for hockey global supremacy, was legit. And it seems that Yashin enjoyed a bit of a lift in Russia in his slumping career: At Loko, he led the team with points at 57, and despite a persistent reputation for being a non-entity in big games, he helped the team past Magnitogorsk Metallurg to reach the finals.

Yashin had a long and personally successful career in North America, notable for starting with great promise and ending with bad feelings. He broke into the league with the Ottawa Senators, and in his first season he won the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year in 1993. But he soon developed a reputation as a bit of a prima donna.

In particular, he frequently groused about his contract, and walked away from his job with the Senators on three separate occasions in financial disputes. That includes missing the entire 1999-2000 season during a protracted salary sulk. In 2001, he convinced the New York Islanders to give him a stunning 10-year deal for $87.5 million, which soon proved a bad investment. The team bought out the final four years of his 10-year contract for a whopping $17.6 million, the most expensive such buyout in NHL history. Then Yaroslavl came along.

So Yashin's successful return to form in his native land should present something of a feel-good story: both for the player himself who found his niche on his native soil, and for Russian hockey as it prepares to make itself a major world player once again on its own terms. But knowing this particular player, and the reality of professional hockey, it isn't to be.

In the March 13 edition of the Ottawa Citizen, Yashin's agent, Mark Gandler, spoke at length about his client's desire to get back to the NHL, which remains without a doubt the place every kid who picks up a hockey stick hopes to someday reach.

Gandler explained that Yashin had received some interest from other NHL clubs last year after the buy-out, but they were only willing to offer "less than 50 percent of his value." He also said Yashin would have loved to return to Ottawa, which is quite a far stretch considering he is still derisively known as Alexei "Ca$hin" among the Senators faithful.

Gandler reports that while players in the Russian are well-treated, it is not quite the same as in the NHL - players have to carry their own equipment bags from the bus to the locker room, for example. He also complains about the lower quality of play on the third and fourth lines.

All this comes against an interesting moment in Russian hockey. Thanks to contract changes, many more Russian players are staying in Russia rather than languishing in the American minor leagues. And the league is busy creating for next year a revamped league funded by big corporations like Gazprom and VTB.

But it says something that despite all this, an aging superstar with a bad reputation would still hold out hope of returning to the NHL. As I explained in an earlier column, I'm not a big fan of the NHL, which has systematically alienated its traditional core of fans in favor of illusory commercial pursuits. And the fact that the Russian league is wrapping up now, and the NHL milks its cash-cow clean through to June some years is just depressing. But there is no denying its supremacy.

Of course, a player as proud as Yashin is likely to stay put in Russia rather than take a contract he feels his beneath him, and the coming changes will almost certainly improve Russia's quality of play. It will firmly cement it as the world's second-best professional hockey league. But the reality is clear. The most exciting hockey player in the world right now is Alexander Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals forward who has already recorded a 100-point season. It is hard to imagine players like him deciding to stay put and suit up for Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk anytime soon.

By Christopher Marcisz