KHL

[Don Wassall]

Anyone follow or know anything about the KHL (Kontinental Hockey League)? It's based in Russia. I read today that they're expanding into Beijing, China next season. There are 28 teams in the league from seven countries. The Beijing team will be just the second Asian-based one, so the other countries must be European.

There seems to be a lot fewer Russians coming over to play in the NHL these days. Could be partly the "new Cold War" started against Russia by Washington, and partly making good money to stay in their home country with the KHL. I wonder if any good North American players are going east to play in the league. I remember there was talk of it happening during the last lockout but I don't think anything came of it.

Here are the current standings of the KHL. You can't tell what city or country the teams represent from what's listed: http://en.khl.ru/standings/

 

[Matra2]

When I was in Latvia a few weeks ago I noticed it was on some of the TVs in a sports bar. Locals were sitting watching it whilst the tourists watched German and English soccer. It was also at the top of the local sports news broadcasts on both the Latvian and Russian language channels so I guess it must be pretty popular there.

 

[backrow]

Mostly Russian teams, Jokerit is from Helsinky (Finland) one of the Dinamo is from Belarus, there's also a team from Croatia (medved) and yet another Dinamo from Latvia. Slovan is from Bratislava (Slovakia).

they were pushing to have more teams involved a while ago, it's invitational league as far as I could tell. Polish team and few from Czech Rep were in talks.