A former minor league hockey player who was part of the defunct Colorado Gold Kings is being held in the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office on a murder charge out of a tiny town in North Carolina.
Bogdan Rudenko, 32, was arrested Christmas day at a Howard Johnson’s hotel in Colorado Springs for investigation of a murder Sunday in Stallings, N.C.
Rudenko last played for the defunct Twin City Cyclones in Winston-Salem, N.C. in the 2008-09 season, according to .
He has played at 19 different minor league teams across the country and in Canada in 15 years, according to the website.
The 6-feet tall, 200-pound right winger’s longest stint with any team was with the Gold Kings between 1998 and 2000, according to .
According to , which tracks hockey brawls, Rudenko got into 31 fights on the ice between 1997 and 2007.
The identity of the homicide victim has yet to be released, but police told the Observer that they believe he’s Russian born, in his early 30s, and has no family in the U.S.
“We haven’t established a motive in this homicide yet,” Stallings police chief Larke Plyler told the Observer. He also said there are other “persons of interest” in the case.
Plyler could not be reached for comment immediately on Saturday.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
