Alex Galchenyuk has used one of nine lives and landed on his feet as he has signed a two-year contract to play with top KHL squad SKA St. Petersburg 

#3 overall pick of 2012 NHL Draft forward Alex Galchenyuk has arrived to the KHL.

Welcome to the K, @AGally94! pic.twitter.com/ikvgIvRtJ4

— KHL (@khl_eng) August 25, 2023

Galchenyuk was supposed to play this season with the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes. However, they terminated his contract not even two weeks after signing him as an unrestricted free agent. 

Stang confirmed that Galchenyuk was arrested on severalJuly 9 on several charges including private property hit and run, disorderly conduct, failure to obey, resisting arrest, and threatening or intimidating. This reckless behavior not only puts his own life at risk but also endangers the lives of innocent individuals on the road. Driving under the influence is an incredibly dangerous action that can have deadly consequences. Thankfully, no innocent people were hurt or worse in this incident.  

NEWS: Scottsdale Police Department has confirmed to The Athletic that Alex Galchenyuk was arrested on July 9 on a number of charges including private property hit and run, disorderly conduct, failure to obey, resisting arrest, Threatening or Intimidating

— Katie Strang (@KatieJStrang) July 13, 2023

In the end, he pled guilty to the threatening charges, and all other charges were dropped. According to those documents, Galchenyuk was sentenced to 30 days of jail time, one of which counts as time served and 27 of which will be suspended upon successful completion of an alcohol recovery program and 12 months without consuming/possessing alcohol. 

pic.twitter.com/hpnZWleUQO

— Alex Galchenyuk (@AGally94) July 18, 2023

According to a Scottsdale police report obtained by The Athletic, Galchenyuk allegedly threatened to kill a police officer and the officer’s family and also repeatedly directed a racial slur toward the officer as he was arrested.  Per the report, Galchenyuk said: 

“I’m gonna chop you and your daughter. Let me go, or I will make one phone call. You’ll never see your family, how scary is that? One phone call and you’re all dead. Your whole family, your bloodline is dead.”

-Alex Galchyuk

Following his arrest, the Coyotes terminated the one-year contract he’d signed on July 1. Galchenyuk, the former Montreal Canadiens’ third overall pick in the 2012 NHL Draft, has played 11 seasons, including two for Arizona. In total he played 654 NHL games, scoring 345 points, including one season where he scored 30 goals. The remainder of his career was underwhelming and not up to the level expected of a player drafted so high. 

Despite a career-high of 32 assists in 2017-18, no assist he ever had for Montreal resonated as well with the fans there as the assist he had in Game 5 of the first round of the 2021 playoffs when the Habs came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the rival Toronto Maple Leafs  

SUZUKI IN OVERTIME! Cole Caufield finds Nick Suzuki, who buries on the 2-on-0 to win it in OT and keep the Habs alive for another day!#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/bsYpXXp7uE

— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) May 28, 2021

This season, St. Petersburg will be home to several former and future NHL players, the most notable is Philadelphia Flyers prospect Matvei Michkov. Galchenyuk will now join that group to play with SKA. They are the reigning regular season champions or the NHL’s version of the President’s Trophy for the team with the most points in the regular season. SKA has won that title twice in the last five seasons, also, they have lost in the KHL’s conference final five times in a row. The last time they won a playoff title was in 2017. 

Maybe he can go to Russia and rehab his career well enough to return to the NHL, but most likely he will remain in Europe to finish off his professional playing days.