Today in Russia’s capital, Moscow, the KHL held a meeting of team representatives. The main issue of the day was changing the rules on the KHL Legionnaires limit. One main goal was to cancel any restrictions as next season the KHL will be welcoming three new clubs.
A “legionnaire” is defined as a player who does not have a Russian passport
Currently, Russian teams can add only five legionnaires to their game roster. However the debuting team ”Admiral” would be allowed to add seven legionnaires for KHL games and non-russian teams will have no limits of legionnaires.
Today, it was decided that starting next season all Russian teams will be allowed to add seven legionnaire players to their game rosters, with the possibility still on the table of a future cancellation of the restriction all together.
The vote was nearly unanimous in favour of the change. The only disenting vote came from Dynamo Moscow who voted against the change. There was also one abstention.
KHL President Alexander Medvedev: ”Every club has same opinion about our destination – to create (a) player preparation system which wouldn’t need any restrictions. If this improvement program is sucessful we could ”Open” our league and (the) amount of Russian players wouldn’t decrease in the league. We don’t want just a formal ”Open” for the league, but we want to do it when our players will be ready to compete against other nationalities of hockey players. Then they will earn their place in roster by showing their skills and proving they’re better not because of limits. We will move forward (with) it slowly, but we expect limits to be removed (entirely) during this Olympic cycle.”
Will this help the teams improve? Of course some legionnaires have hard times considering they have to prove their best to play in KHL right away or be replaced by someone who can. With only a limited number of legionnaires allowed in the lineup, there is little patience for them to produce, and no opportunity to develop young legionnaires players and have them take a legionnaires spot while they develop.
A removal of the legionnaires limit is a good step for the KHL, especially if they still dream about competing with the NHL one day for the title of best league in the world.
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