More photos » by Steve Nesius - AP

7 months ago: Pittsburgh Penguins' Ruslan Fedotenko (26), of Ukraine, Evgeni Malkin, center, of Russia, and Petr Sykora (17) of the Czech Republic, celebrate Sykora's goal against the Tampa Bay Lightning during the third period of their hockey game Tuesday, April 7, 2009 in Tampa, Fla. The Penguins beat the Lightning 6-4. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius)

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Lately a lot of news regarding Petr Sykora and Miroslav Satan and KHL team's interest in them has been coming to North America.   Two days ago, James Mirtle had whispers about Sykora and Kuklaskorner had the following report linked up this morning from "Russia today":

Two players from the Pittsburg Penguins, who took the Stanley Cup last week in a dramatic seven-game thriller against Detroit, may leave the U.S. for KHL this summer, Sportbox.ru reports.

Metallurg Magnitogorsk is interested in Czech Petr Sykora, who played 76 games for the Pens this season, scoring 25 goals and 21 assists.

The club’s contract with the player has expired and, according to his agent, the team is not going to offer him a new agreement....

Another Stanley Cup winner, Miroslav Satan, is wanted in Kazakhstan by Barys hockey club. The Astana team has ready offered a two year contract worth $6 million to the Slovak player.

As usual, you can't always trust all the reports that trickle out of Russia regarding hockey news...Sometimes where there's smoke there's fire, but sometimes it's not the case not. 

Credit Faceoff Factor and one of their readers for seeing agent Alan Walsh's twitter before I did.  Walsh has a pretty entertaining and informative twitter account, if you're into that type of thing, as he's the agent for a bunch of Penguins.  Along with Sykora and Satan, Marc-Andre Fleury, Pascal Dupuis and Ruslan Fedotenko are also Walsh's clients.

Regarding the Satan and Sykora rumors, Walsh tweeted:

I was informed of internet report Petr Sykora negotiating with Magnitogorsk (KHL) for last 4 wks. Totally false. There has been no contact.

and:

Also, informed of report that Miro Satan received 2 year offer from Bary's Astana (KHL). Again, no truth. Who makes up this stuff?

So even though Sykora and Satan may not be as important to the Penguins future as other impending free agents like Fedotenko, Bill Guerin and Rob Scuderi, still interesting to see all the information we have in this day and age.  Five-ten years ago we wouldn't have rumors from Russia widely spread and probably last year we wouldn't have sports agents communicating through twitter.