The Vladivostok goaltender gets sprayed as Anton Volchenkov looks on. Photo courtesy KHL
The KHL's second season started last week. Its 16 playoff teams are marching toward a trophy named after astronaut Yuri Gagarin—the first human to venture into space and once a potent symbol in the USSR's ideological war with the United States. Declared a "hero of the Soviet Union" by Nikita Khrushchev, Gagarin was killed in a plane crash seven years after his triumph. His remains are entombed in the Kremlin.The institution for which Gagarin is a badge of Russian virtue has a range only slightly less expansive than his cosmic flight. Twenty-nine KHL teams are spread across eight countries and two continents, and with the addition of Beijing's Kunlun Red Star, its member nations are home to over 1.5 billion people. It is regarded as the second-best hockey league in the world and features much of the finest skill outside of the NHL. This season, Pavel Datsyuk—a former Detroit Red Wings superstar and one of the most beloved NHLers in recent memory—returned to Russia, where he plays in St. Petersburg alongside Ilya Kovalchuk, who was a longtime star in North America, scoring 50-plus goals twice with the Atlanta Thrashers. The league also possesses a trove of talent most North Americans have never heard of.
In its present incarnation, the KHL is only eight years old. Born out of the Russian Superleague, it was created to make a circuit inclusive of the best teams in Russia, Europe, and Asia. Chernyshenko told VICE Sports that the KHL was founded to "share the huge potential of Russian ice hockey with the other countries on the Eurasian space," and noted that its founding occurred in the same year Russia won its first world championship in 15 years. The KHL shares a symbiotic relationship with the national team, for which it serves as a developmental cradle.
The brilliant Datsyuk now captains glamourous St. Petersburg. Photo courtesy KHL
Cultural dichotomy: Red Star fans support their team, and nation, in Yaroslavl, Russia. Photo courtesy KHL
Marty St. Pierre (blue) thinks negative perceptions of the KHL are mostly outdated. Photo courtesy KHL
To try to understand the KHL is to wade through stories testifying to its strangeness. To learn about the league is to confront evidence predicting its imminent financial collapse. Conjecture, innuendo, and culturally-inflected criticism preempt consideration of its product. But what is the KHL game actually like?"The biggest difference between the KHL and NHL other than of play is the pressure. It's only 60 games, and every game is balls to the wall," St. Pierre said. Teams can't afford to give wins away, which garner three points when earned in regulation. It can be a mental slog, especially when things aren't going well. "You lose two or three games and the pressure is on," he said. Ownership has no trepidation about firing coaches when necessary, and there is additional demand on imports, who are expected to produce.When asked what of play the KHL is promoting, Chernyshenko was effusive. KHL hockey "provides a dynamic, uncompromising and exciting show to any viewer—both to regular sports fans and the wider public," he wrote over email. "We put our efforts to make the sport attractive to young people, women, and whole families. [The] KHL is a league of the strong."While its attendance numbers don't approach those of the NHL, the league offers unique and varied atmospheres. "It's entertaining. I really like it," Wolski said. "The fans are fun to watch. Cheerleaders are fun to watch. It's very, very different. It's not like people are sitting on their hands, people are really into it."
Kovalchuk (17) is one of the Russian superstars who's returned home. Photo courtesy KHL
If the KHL is a league of the strong, it is not a league of the fair. While Chernyshenko said the league applied a positively-received revenue sharing scheme at the end of the 2014-15 season (money, he said, that allowed teams to improve their facilities), significant payroll disparities exist between traditional powerhouses and the KHL's smaller clubs, despite a salary cap being in place. "The league must explore an 'A' and 'B' league," Wolski said. "Lots of teams are already out of the playoffs at the end of November. This is due to [the difference in] team payrolls."On many of these top teams—like SKA Saint Petersburg, Dynamo Moscow and Metallurg Magnitogorsk—there are fabulous players most North Americans have never heard of. The KHL gives talented Russians, who may not commandeer a top NHL salary, the chance to remain stars at home, rather than toil as members of a supporting cast abroad. Sergei Mozyakin, who's never played an NHL game and led the KHL in scoring this year, is one of them. "It's a comfort zone for those Russian players, too," Wolski said. "Why would they want to come play for the Winnipeg Jets or Nashville Predators for $1.2 million dollars and play another 33 percent [of games while taking] a $3-4 million pay cut? It doesn't make sense."
The talented Mozyakin led the KHL in scoring this season. Photo courtesy KHL
Young fans bask in the legacy of Russian hockey. Photo courtesy KHL
This cheerleader's smile almost obscures empty seats in Shanghai. Photo courtesy KHL
Sergei Mozyakin, Soviet hockey legend Vladislav Tretiak, and KHL president Dmitry Chernyshenko. Photo courtesy KHL
Russian president Vladimir Putin, the KHL's most high-profile supporter. Photo via Wiki Commons
Dynamo fans celebrate with raucous intensity. Photo courtesy KHL
It is easy to invoke Putin and see only metaphor in the KHL project: as a rebirth of Russian imperialism, seeking to reassert itself over Eurasia under the benevolent guise of promoting hockey. But this would be more historical prejudice, in which Russians are eternally mistrustful and their cultural accomplishments seen only through a geopolitical prism.There is a less dramatic way of thinking about the KHL: as a first-rate hockey league of monumental cultural diversity whose success could have huge implications for the game's future. It simply needs more time to establish itself. This is particularly so in places like Beijing, where the league's true impact won't be known until China makes a successful foray into international hockey, if that ever happens.The league's unknowable finances make its position seem forever insecure, but the KHL, wary of collapsing under its own weight, is proceeding with its expansion carefully. For now, the thread connecting its disparate parts is still holding.