By now everyone has heard about the Continental Hockey League (KHL), the new Russian league which essential the previous Russian Super League with 4 additional teams.
This is the brainchild of Alexander Ivanovich Medvedev, a Russian oil baron and the vice-president of Gazprom, who has his heart set on creating a hockey league that can rival the NHL. There is a patriotic element to the project in that he and his colleagues resent the fact that there hockey stars are playing in North America.
I see one of the objectives of the league is to repatriate Russian players back to Russia. In fact that has gradually been taking place. In the season prior to the lockout there were 57 Russian players in the NHL. This past season that number has fallen to just 27.
Contributing to this has been the lack of a player transfer agreement with Russia. Most major European hockey nations have an agreement whereby the NHL pays some money to bring players from these nations to the NHL. This money helps to pay for development of future players and the cost of development of the new NHL player (at least in principle). The negotiation of these amount has been done in a "take it or leave it" style by the NHL and the Europeans have no leverage. Russia is the only nation to reject this agreement. This means that Russian contracts do not have to be honored in North America and North American contracts do not have to be honored in Russia. A Russian player who signs in North America can decide that he is unhappy there and leave in mid-contract to sign in Russia. The recent agreement between the NHL and KHL means that the parties will at least honour each others contracts although no transfer fee has been agreed to.
So will the KHL hurt the NHL?
There is little agreement on the impact of the new league. If the goal is predominantly to repatriate Russian players well there are few left in the NHL. The big stars like Ovechkin and Malkin could make more money back home but would not be playing with the best players in the world. Even older players like Federov rejected better offers from Russian teams to remain in the NHL. But other players like Alexei Yashin, Aleksey Morozov. Danny Markov and Oleg Kvasha went back to Russia. The signing of Jagr and Emery weren't big deals because Jagr was at the end of his career and Emery was being treated as an untouchable by NHL teams.
Everything changed with the signing of Alex Radulov who was still under contract with Nashville. Entry level players are underpaid in the NHL but their big money starts when they can become free agents. The Burke-Lowe feud is because Burke feels that Edmonton's offer sheet to Dustin Penner has the potential of increasing salaries for younger players. The KHL can potentially have a similar impact.
As long as the KHL poaches Russian players and marginal NHL talents (like John Grahame and Chris Simon) no one will get that worked up. The real danger is the Europeans that do not pay even close to what is being offered to players by the KHL. But what would happen if the billionaire Russians target North American stars? What if Rick Nash who becomes a free agent in about 2 years is offered$100 million over 5 years? No NHL team can come close to matching that. Things might really get interesting.
