There have been strong rumors over the past week, that the KHL could be coming to the UK. News of further expansion for the league, with the possibility of clubs from Estonia, China and Sweden have already been mentioned over the last twelve months, but now a fresh bid has arrived from Great Britain.
KHL President Dmitry Chernyshenko confirmed receipt of applications from all four nations during the KHL All Star Game last weekend, Tass.ru. He went on to hint a decision could be made as early as April.
“At the moment we have a request from Estonia, Sweden, the UK and other countries, certainty will come in April.” said Chernyshenko
The league looks set to expand in Beijing and with teams already located in Belarus, Croatia, Kazakhstan Latvia, Slovakia and Finland, the announcement of teams in Estonia, Sweden and Great Britain would certainly fall in line with the league’s initial plans to become a pan-European entity. Expansion in the UK has been rumored before, but financial problems have delayed those plans until now. It seems that there is still interest in forming a club based in Great Britain however, but with no clear details of where the team could be based at this stage, it is very much ‘your guess is as good as mine’.
The most likely location would be in London with a new team being created, or possibly one of the Elite League teams breaking away to join the KHL. However that brings its own problems. If the KHL were to choose London, they will face the same problems the Super League had when they placed the Knights in the Docklands Arena, and then the Elite League when the Racers folded.
There has been talks of the Elite League expanding with a London-based side being a part of that along with either the Aberdeen Lynx or Blackburn Hawks taking up the ‘Northern’ spot. Neil Black the owner of the Nottingham Panthers and Braehead Clan was rumored to be involved with the London Emperors project but that seems to have quietened down of late.
Any KHL side in London will face the same problems those others teams have had down the years, namely the lack of an obvious facility to play out of as well as the financial backing to make the team successful in the capital. Wembley Arena would make most sense. It’s the spiritual home of British hockey, and was the venue for the Play-off championship weekends during the Heineken-era in that country. As far as I’m aware it is also empty and would be an ideal location. Depending on how much financial backing came from the KHL a team could possibly play at the former Millennium Dome in Greenwich, now known as the O2 Arena, which has hosted hockey before in the shape of the NHL overseas games between Anaheim and Los Angeles in 2007. Major concerts are scheduled there though and that could cause a sticking point.
Outside of a ‘new’ London team, if you were looking for an existing Elite League side to make the step up there could be various options. Manchester has the MEN Arena which is as close to NHL quality as you can get in the UK although no side currently plays out of there. Nottingham’s National Ice Center is another option, as is the Odyssey Arena in Belfast. Both the Sheffield Steelers and the Glasgow-based Braehead Clan have appeared in this seasons Champions Hockey League and that might have been with a view to getting a foot in the KHL door.
Sheffield Arena could host KHL hockey tomorrow if required while the Steelers have probably been the biggest name in UK hockey over the past two decades. Braehead’s Arena is built into a shopping mall, and is to be flattened and re-built next-door in the not too distant future, so that may cause them some issues if they hoped to join the KHL.
While the MEN would be available to use, the previous incumbents, the Storm had all sorts of issues playing there, with ever-increasing costs forcing them to fold and start back up again 15 years later. The present Storm side, who are playing in the Elite league currently reside in Altrincham alongside the Aces, while Tony Hand’s Manchester Phoenix, who were the City’s premier side while the Storm had folded were forced out to Deeside, with a view to moving to Blackburn next year, or building their very own city Centre venue. With so many options in the area, could they support another one in Manchester?
Another problem to overcome would be the UK player quota. KHL rules state that each side must have 90% Of their playing staff from the country they are based in. That could prove difficult to recruit the best GB players and then expect them to be competitive against teams stacked with former and future NHL stars.
There have been suggestions that a UK team could train at another rink in the country and just travel into London for games. That could provide a solution to the extra running costs playing out of a major arena would pose, not to mention if the ice time was unavailable due to a concert taking place. There are plenty of Rinks available both within the M25 and just outside of it that could be utilized. Bracknell, Basingstoke, Slough and Guildford instantly spring to mind.
London is a major multi-cultural city and is home to a number of wealthy Russian businessmen, with others owning second homes in the capital, so there are potential ties to the league’s existing ownership groups as well as the Russian government and the KHL’s current administration, which may play a part in the application being submitted, either in terms of an ownership role or a financial support capacity. Workforce bank which is based in London and provides financial support to Russian’s living and working within the UK has announced a partnership deal with the KHL. The deal involves plans to expand business operations between themselves and the KHL, with the possibility of bringing in training and exhibition games to the United Kingdom.
If this does actually come into fruition, having top class hockey in the UK is a huge deal with the opportunity for fans to watch sides such as CSKA Moscow and SKA St Petersburg in action. However with the April deadline looming I can’t realistically see how a team in this country will be ready in time for the 2016-17 season. The Chinese team looks to be in place, while the Estonian one isn’t too far behind and it is most likely these will join the league next for next season. Any team in Sweden and Britain would need more time to be ready and if they are to join the league it is more likely to happen for the 2017-18 season, if at all.
Expanding a league with four new teams is a huge task, and although there isn’t the intricacies of expansion drafts like they have in the NHL, admitting that many new teams could be spreading other resources a bit thin. That being said it would allow all four Divisions in the KHL to have Eight teams, giving some semblance of balance. All things considered I believe if this does go ahead two teams will join this year and the other two the year after.
What remains for the other teams who have expressed an interest in joining the KHL is interesting too. The Proposed Chinese bid is believed to be based in Beijing, while a second side playing out of Shanghai is meant to be following suit not long after. Add in the fact former-KHL teams such as Atlant and Krylyla Sovetov are interested on a return and suddenly we have plenty of competition for a limited number of places available.
Some time ago, Patrick Conway [writer of the brilliant blog Conway’s Russian Hockey https://conwaysrussianhockey.wordpress.com/category/khl/ ] had this to say about the possible locations of expansion teams:
‘The big KHL news this past week comes from the “Expansion” file. There has been much talk this year about the possibilities of a Chinese team for next season, and now we have similarly exciting news from the geographical other end of the KHL, namely that an Estonian group is interested as well. The proposed new team is Ilves (“Lynx”) Tallinn, a newly-founded outfit based in Estonia’s capital city. According to one of the organizers, former Estonian basketball star Heino Enden, the purpose of KHL membership would be to raise the profile, and calibre, of Estonian hockey (the country’s men’s national team currently competes in IIHF Division IB, the third tier of international hockey). If approved Ilves will play at the Tondiraba Jäähall (capacity 5840). We are obviously miles from anything official on this, but it most certainly bears watching. Estonia had a team — Dinamo Tallinn — in the early years of Soviet hockey, before fading from the hockey scene somewhat. There had been some talk, a couple of years ago, about the possibility of that country putting a junior team in the MHL, although that came to nothing in the end. Also on the topic of expansion, note the last sentence of the article linked above. China we knew about, but I’m very interested in the suggestion that Italy is once again a possible KHL destination. Milano Rossoblu made a spirited attempt to join the league a few years ago, before arena concerns torpedoed the project, but it sounds like talks are still going on…’
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