Sergei Gonchar looked down the Penguins' locker-room hallway and essentially ordered Evgeni Malkin in Russian: Come over here and answer some questions in English.

What is your favorite thing about America?

"Restaurants," the 21-year-old Malkin said, looking at Gonchar for affirmation.

What has been the hardest part about adjusting to life in Pittsburgh and the NHL?

"Games," he replied, after a little Russian discussion with Gonchar about the query. "And the lang-wich."

The Americanization of Evgeni Malkin is a work in progress.

Progress, though, is undeniable.

Malkin sees it. Gonchar sees it. Teammates such as road roommate Max Talbot, who now forces him to order his own room service, sees it.

He became part of the first pair of players from a country other than Canada or Sweden to lead the NHL in scoring, second only to fellow Russian emigre Alexander Ovechkin of Washington. He was tied with teammate Sidney Crosby for first in playoff points per game with 1.55 and second with 14 points in the nine contests before Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final Friday night. He has made pucks dance and ice spray, much like the last Penguins import who ranked so highly among the NHL leading scorers, Czech Jaromir Jagr, now of the New York Rangers who Malkin helped to oust the past round.

Oddly, despite the influence of players such as Jagr -- the first European to win an NHL scoring title -- and Ovechkin and Malkin, the first Russian 1-2 finishers in NHL scoring -- the international sphere of influence on the NHL is shrinking. Particularly, exports to the West from talent-rich Russia are slumping.

In other words: The Russians aren't coming.

At least not in the droves they did in the decade and a half between the fall of communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union around 1990 and the end of the NHL's lockout in 2005.

Foreign exchange

Nearly twice as many Czechs such as Jagr populated league rosters when this season started, 51 to 27 Russians. That latter figure represents a 115-percent drop in the number of Russian NHL players from six seasons ago, when there were some 58. Even the Entry Draft has seen a decline, from the 19 Russians selected in 2004 -- when Ovechkin and Malkin went Nos. 1 and 2 -- to nine last June.

Part of the reason, Gonchar said, is that officials in the Russian Super League have more (read: oil-stained) payroll and less inclination to part with young prospects whom "they develop over there and invest a lot of money on." Also, Gonchar added, Russians who would be minor-leaguers or lower-line NHL players in North America -- such as former Penguins winger Aleksey Morozov -- "decide to stay at home, where they don't have to adjust to anything" -- and, of course, earn far more rubles than ever before.

"The [Russian] numbers are down, there's no doubt," Bill Daly, the NHL's vice president and chief legal officer, said over his cell phone little more than a week ago. "But, again, I don't think it's impacting the quality of the players we're getting. The best Russian players want to play in the National Hockey League, and they're still ending up here."

The international issue remains a matter of some contention.

The International Ice Hockey Federation, which represents the world in general and in particular here the six European nations that supply the league with considerable talent, reopened its Player Transfer Agreement with the NHL before New Year's Day. The sides met in New York in mid-January and negotiated an interim deal that, for one thing, forces NHL teams to offer back to European clubs all former players 22 years old or younger who fail to make an NHL season-opening roster. Of 59 Europeans signed last year, only six made those rosters, the IIHF reported.

That reworked Player Transfer Agreement, though, could be dead in the water.

The Czech federation, with reportedly 14 Super Liga teams voting against it, decided to join Russia in declining to partake of that NHL pipeline deal.

The upshot: World free agency could ensue over the next month.

"No new Transfer Agreement yet," Daly wrote in an email the other day. "It's possible we won't have one for the coming season."

IIHF President Rene Fasel, in a recent e-mail from the governing body's Switzerland headquarters, addressed some of the Euros' concerns. The $200,000-per-player "transfer money is much less in Euros today," Fasel said, but added that the falling value of the U.S. dollar isn't the over-riding dilemma. "Basically, the European leagues and clubs don't like when the NHL can take players under contract. Far too many players are taken" and used in less than starring roles, "and this hurts everyone in the long run, [including] the NHL." Fasel continued that, for one thing, his group also aims to move ahead by two weeks, to June 1, the deadline for such player transfers.

The Russians -- who along with the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland sent a representative to that mid-January meeting -- remain absent. The Russian Hockey Federation has yet to sign any such agreement since the NHL lockout ended, a disagreement about to enter its fourth year.

"We never really indicated any willingness to negotiate separately," as Russian authorities sought the past few years, Daly said. "That will continue to be our position." He added that while NHL officials still have questions about who controls that nation's federation, the lack of Russian -- and now Czech -- participation in the agreement "is not something that we're ignoring. We have to establish a relationship ... and deal with them the best we can."

Malkin was arguably the last sparkling bauble -- a "national treasure," proclaimed his ex-general manager -- to be lured from Russian hockey. He stole away from his team in the Helsinki, Finland, airport in August 2006 and eventually made his way to the Penguins, though he later found himself sued in a New York court. The final claims of a lawsuit brought by his former Metallurg Magnitogorsk team were dismissed early last year. Magnitogorsk got no money for its lost treasure, but Russian contract law was changed so no more players, like Malkin did, could opt out of a signed contract with only a two-week notice.

Adjusting to the West

Gaining a visa that covers the length of a contract or even a green card good for 10 years? Those are cinches, with a little assistance from NHL front offices, immigration lawyers and embassies that charge $1,000 for expedited documentation within 72 hours.

No, the hard part about adapting to such foreign soil is. ... everything else. Not to mention the foreign ice.

"Coming to North America?" began Penguins winger Jarkko Ruutu, a Finn who played one season at Michigan Tech. "Guys are 18, 19 years old, from the other side of the world, and everything is different. You have no food. You have to find a place to live. You have no driver's license. No credit cards.

"You don't understand how much energy it takes to get the off-ice stuff right. It's hard to explain."

Oh, and as for hockey, the ice is much bigger, the style more free-flowing through the middle, and the play much more physical, defensive, intense with that 25-percent-longer, 82-game NHL schedule.

Contrast that to Europe, where teams provide apartments and houses, meals, cars and sometimes drivers.

NHL teams basically force such kids "to do a lot of things on your own," said Gonchar. That explains why the Penguins, the team that in December 1990 traded for Jiri Hrdina so he could primarily counsel the rookie Jagr, appreciate how Gonchar guides Malkin. "Not every kid has that," Penguins general manager Ray Shero said.

Malkin, agreeing to that brief interview in English the other day, admitted that it helped to have Gonchar -- a lockout-season teammate in Magnitogorsk -- at his side: "Yeah, that made it easier."

"I knew how tough it was for him," Gonchar, 34, said of Malkin, 21. "The other thing you have to remember, when he was leaving his country, the way Evgeni escaped, there was a lot of pressure on him to do well. A lot of things happened to him over that one year. ..."

What a difference another American year makes.

"It shows on the ice, too," Talbot said of his roomie's newfound comfort factor.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely," Gonchar added of Malkin's adjustment. "That's what happened to him this year. He's more comfortable. He's playing much better. He's doing things he didn't do last year."

And how do you feel about fewer and fewer Russians coming over nowadays?

Malkin and Gonchar exchanged words in their native tongue before Gonchar translated: "He still thinks that some Russians will come to this league, because it's the best league in the world."