As expected, the KHL president and the Board of Directors had their special briefing and decisions for the next season, and boy were there some big ones; including the confirmation that all 28 teams will stay, arena policy updates, potential Chinese expansion and abolishment of back-to-back games.
The first thing, a rather small thing, is the rescheduling of the calendar. With all 28 teams staying in the league (Atlant just being replaced with the legendary Spartak Moscow), the 60 game schedules are staying, but things are broken down a little differently. Each team will hold two matches, one home and one away with the teams in their conference and another two from the opposing teams in the Conference. This means there will be 54 matches split 27 home games and 27 away. The last 6 will be again split 3 home and 3 away and will be based on spectator and geographical issues. The league is set to start the season on August 24th, which breaks away from the previous traditional match, to now be between the Gagarin Cup winner SKA and regular season championship, or “Presidents Trophy” winner CSKA Moscow. The schedule is set to end on the 18th of April.th of February, with the playoffs taking off almost straight after.
The schedule being a little more stretched out also comes with the news the KHL will no longer have back-to-back games. An advantage of the 60 game format is that this will aid all parties involved. As President Dmitry Chernyshenko pointed out, that was not just for the “health of the players” but for the “congestion” of too many games going on together, which is ultmately better for the consumer. This is also in conjunction with the KHL going further with more subscription channels and terrestrial TV to help bring the game to a wider audience and up the quality of broadcasting of the games.
In aid of this as well, the KHL will be putting down tougher rules for teams that do not meet technical requirements for things like “light, for security and so on” and anything that may hinder TV broadcasting. While no teams were named in this, the league is handing down harsher penalties for owners who do not improve including expulsion from the league. A real push is being made to help the quality of the broadcasting and this media game is the general gist of the main points coming out of the meeting.
However the biggest surprise announcement was the possibility of a Chinese club joining the KHL. Apparently, it is much closer than one would think with the KHL president remarking that it was “technically” possible for the 2016/2017 season we see a Chinese club join the Ranks. Although they are working closely with their Chinese counterparts things seem to be stuck in the “great potential” phase. This is helped with IIHF President Rene Fasel, who has positively assessed the possible emergence of a Chinese team in the KHL a rather exciting possibility. With all the other foreign teams handing in their financial sheets and with the league in a more stable state than many thought, this expansion is welcome news. Politics aside, this is still a rather exciting one.
The elephants in the room however were not fully addressed. There was no work on any attempt to connect with Donbass again and appears to have died with any hope of them returning under the current climate. The proposed NHL/KHL agreement also wasn’t discussed, which appears to be stuck on both sides. While the NHL is rather quiet to talk, several prominent KHL members have already opposed parts of the bill, mostly surrounding the transfers of younger players and KHL-drafted kids. I’ve previously gone into details on it in this piece, and while I hope the agreement will not die, it’s been quietened down. We can only hope it’s not removed.
The news coming out has been mostly positive and confirming things we already know. While we weren’t due for an official Slovan Bratislava announcement for a couple of days yet, the KHL Board seems to be aiming wide and pushing the marketing side of things further to keep the league stable. While the KHL attempts to expand its ranks, and SKA St. Petersburg takes the crown of Europe’s most popular team on social media, the KHL continues its quest to become the most dominant league in Europe and maybe at this rate, Eurasia too. Yet as said Maxim Sokolov said, “The NHL will always be two steps ahead of the KHL”, but the KHL is making a good run at trying to keep up with the NHL, and an expansion into Chinese markets might just unearth some hidden talents.
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