Photo: Hartford Wolf Pack

Finnish defenseman Ilkka Heikkinen has signed a one year contract with HC Sibir Novosibirsk of the KHL.  The 25-year old blueliner, who joined the Rangers as a free agent last summer and appeared in seven games for the club, chose to continue his career in the KHL after the Rangers refused to offer him a one-way contract.

Heikkinen played 72 games in the AHL for the Hartford Wolf Pack last season, picking up eight goals and 30 assists to tie defense partner Bobby Sanguinetti (who played 11 fewer games) for the Wolf Pack lead in scoring on  defense.  He saw limited playing time in his seven games in the NHL, and failed to register a point.

Heikkinen’s departure from North America comes as no surprise, since he made his displeasure with spending the season in Hartford known in an interview with Newsday’s Steve Zipay during the Olympic break in February.  While he played well for the Wolf Pack, he was largely overrated by Rangers fans desperate for anyone to replace dead weight Wade Redden on defense, and ultimately failed to show enough to earn the guaranteed position in the NHL that he was looking for.

After signing with Sibir, Heikkinen spoke with Maria Levinskaya for an interview on the team’s web site which is translated below.  While it reveals nothing earth shattering, it provides a better introduction to Heikkinen than we ever got during his one season in North America, and contains a few interesting anecdotes about his time on the Wolf Pack.

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Source: Reuters

Sovietsky Sport is reporting that New York Rangers goaltender Steve Valiquette has signed with CSKA Moscow of the KHL.  According to their story, the signing has been confirmed by the league, though it hasn’t yet been posted on CSKA’s web site.

Valiquette played only six games for the Rangers this season, posting .852 save percentage and 3.74 goals-against average, before being demoted to the Hartford Wolf Pack, where he put up similar stats.  He suffered a season-ending finger injury after playing in only eleven contests for the Wolf Pack.  He was set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer.

This will be the second stint in Russia for the 32-year old Valiquette, who spent the 2005-2006 season with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. He’ll join Rangers 2009 seventh round draft pick Mikhail Pashnin on CSKA Moscow.

This post originally appeared over at SNY Rangers Blog.

Like it did for the parent club in New York, the 2009-2010 Hartford Wolf Pack season came to an end on Sunday, though with decidedly less excitement and suspense.  Thanks to a 9-2 trouncing by the Worcester Sharks on Wednesday and a Bridgeport Sound Tiger victory over the Lowell Devils on Friday, the Pack’s extremely slim playoff hopes were officially dashed Friday night, even as the team rebounded to take a rematch against the Sharks, 3-2.

To their credit, the Pack came out and gave fans a good show in their final game at the XL Center on Saturday, riding a franchise record seven goal second period to a scrap-filled 7-5 whitewashing of the lowly Springfield Falcons.  They wrapped up the season in Bridgeport on Sunday with a 2-1 win over the Sound Tigers, capping off a 10-5-0 end-of-season run that proved to be too little, too late.

I’ll dig deeper into the whys and wherefores behind the Wolf Pack’s first finish outside the AHL’s playoff picture, and take a closer look at some individual performances, in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, here are three high-level issues that helped sabotage the Wolf Pack’s unlucky thirteenth season:

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