The first ever KHL Draft took place on June 1st and the teams are in full swing trying to form the rosters in sight of the 2009-10 season, which might have some new rules as the teams might be split in two conferences in order to cut expenses from travels. Additionally, it has been announced that the 2010 KHL All Stars Game might be played either in St. Petersburg, Chelyabinsk or Minsk.

But, as mentioned, the teams are rushing to sign the available talents and some big names has been announced. The most active teams so far are probably Salavat Yulaev Ufa and Dinamo Moscow.

The Ufa franchise started building their new team from a central role: the coaching staff. Luring from CSKA Moscow Vyacheslav Bykov and Igor Zakharkin, they also announced former Avangard head coach Sergei Gersonsky as assistant. Regarding players, they secured starting goalkeeper Aleksandr Eremenko for four further seasons and signed the likes of Patrick Thoresen (from Lugano, CH), Andreas Johansson (from Rogle, Sweden, he played half a season in SKA last year), and big Russian names Sergei Zinoviev from Dinamo Moscow and Viktor Kozlov from the Washington Capitals. Many other players might join the team, the most rumored are Oleg Saprykin, who has just been traded from CSKA Moscow to Dinamo (might be traded in exchange with Andrei Taratukhin) and Dmitri Kalinin.

Regarding Dinamo Moscow, they lost Sergei Zinoviev, but signed the Swedish duo made up of Linus Omark and Johan Harju, secured the young but expert defenseman Dmitri Vorobiev and also got Leo Komarov from Pelicans Lathi of the SM-Liiga. Czech head coach Vladimir Vujtek is gone, replaced by Sergei Kotov, whose last work has been in Novosibirsk. As said they could still get Andrei Taratukhin from Salavat Yulaev Ufa and the talk of Maksim Afinogenov never gets old.

Reigning champions of Ak Bars Kazan also had a good transfer campaign so far, having signed Swedish goalie Mikael Tellqvist from the Phoenix Coyotes, Jarkko Immonen from Finnish JYP Jyväskylä, and returned former Leopards Igor Schadilov, Aleksei Tereschenko (both from Salavat) and the young defenseman Yakov Seleznev from Amur Khabarovsk. Additionally, they also traded for Lada's top scorer Evgeny Ketov, giving away the young center Mikhail Zhukov to Togliatti., and recently they renewed the contract to Aleksei Emelin, who refused an offer from the Montreal Canadiens.

SKA St. Petersburg also had a busy May, not only as they got Aleksei Yashin from Lokomotiv, but also as they signed Albert Leschev and Aleksandr Korolyuk from Atlant Mytischi, Yuri Trubachev from Severstal Cherepovets and Petr Cajanek from Dinamo Moscow. 

2009 KHL Runners-up of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, lost Yashin, are trying to retain most of the team, but they managed to add two very good foreigners from the NHL, Daniel Tjarnqvist from Colorado and Richard Zednik from Florida. Surely they will announce further signings in June and July.

Also Metallurg Magnitogorsk did a good job so far, landing two quality Finnish players in Toni Koivisto and Petri Kontiola, adding Russians Nikolai Pronin, Igor Radulov and Fedor Fedorov. They also look in pole position for getting an autograph from Sergei Fedorov, securing him for the next two seasons.

Two top clubs are patiently inquiring the transfer market, without hasting announcing new players. Avangard Omsk has only signed the Kazakh netminder Vitaly Kolesnik, while Atlant Mytischi looks in a weakend economical state and lost most of their top players, announcing mostly veteran players as they picked up Oleg Petrov from Ak Bars Kazan, Oleg Kvasha from Traktor, Igor Mirnov from Metallurg Magnitogorsk (not a veteran, but still an experienced player) and others.

CSKA is also on a rebuilding program now. After losing Bykov and Zakharkin they hired as team's new head coach the unexperienced Sergei Nemchinov, who led the Russian Junior National team in the past two seasons, and lost some players: not only Saprykin, who was exchanged with defenseman Yakov Rylov, but also Vadim Epanchintsev and foreigners Markkanen, Hedstrom and Hannula. If that's not enough, forwards Sergei Shirokov and Denis Parshin don't want to play in the Army team anymore and they started a legal battle to leave the team. Its first round went to CSKA, but at this point it's unlikely that they will be back for the 09-10 season.

Other teams' interesting moves are Deron Quint signed by Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk and Austrian goalie Bernd Brückler by Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod.

Some interesting players still without a contract are Aleksandr Perezhogin and Kirill Koltsov, who are rumored to join soon Avangard Omsk. The teams are now expected to slow down a bit in sight of the expiring contracts in North America, who are set to run out on June 30th.