During his sports career, Nikolai Zherdev has played in several Russian and foreign hockey clubs. However, none of them managed to gain a foothold. The athlete more than once became a participant in scandals both with the leadership of clubs and with his wife. The difficult character of Nicholas and his not quite sporting lifestyle led him to divorce his wife.
From the biography of Nikolai Olegovich Zherdev
The future hockey player was born in Kiev on November 5, 1984. At the first stage of his sports biography, Zherdev played for the youth team of Ukraine, was a pupil of coach Y. Krylov.
In 1999, Nikolai moved to Russia and began playing for the Elemash youth hockey club. Zherdev had a chance to play for the youth team of the country. He won the 2002 World Cup among juniors.
Sports career
In 2002, Zherdev signed an agreement with the CSKA club, led by the famous Viktor Tikhonov. Playing for this club, Nikolai did a good training job and scored 28 points in 64 matches.
In August 2003, the hockey player signed a contract for three years with the Columbus Blue Jackets team (USA). The amount under this contract amounted to more than 7 million dollars. At the same time, the agreement stipulated that the player would continue to play for CSKA until the end of 2003, and he would move to the United States in 2004. However, the hockey player appeared on the basis of the new team in the fall of 2003. CSKA opposed this state of affairs, saying that Zherdev was in military service and had no right to leave the location of the military unit. The player was threatened with criminal prosecution. However, the international sports court ruled in favor of Nicholas.
In 2006, Nikolai entered into a difficult dispute with the leadership of the Columbus Blue Jackets club. The player demanded that he be increased reward. However, he was refused: the club management referred to the fact that his last season Zherdev was not the most successful. A compromise solution resulted in a salary of $ 7.5 million over a three-year period.
In 2008, the hockey player was sold to the New York Rangers team. Two years later, Nikolai signed a contract with the Philadelphia Flyers team. At the same time, the hockey player’s salary amounted to $ 2 million.
In 2011, Nikolai returned to Russia and signed a contract with the Atlant domestic club. In the summer of 2013, the player signed a contract with the HC Lev Prague club for a period of one year. However, after a month, the player turned to the club management and asked to terminate the contract. In the sports environment, there were rumors that this decision was connected with the violation of the sports regime by the hockey player: fans believed that Zherdev simply went on a spree. There is evidence that a few weeks before the decision, Nikolai made a brawl in a public place.
Zherdev spent some time outside the club, and at the end of September 2013 he signed a contract with the capital's Spartak. But already in November, this cooperation at the initiative of the club was terminated.
In 2014, Nikolai played for Moscow Dynamo, then for HC Sochi. Since the end of 2015, Zherdev began to play for Torpedo (Nizhny Novgorod).
