Sports News
Russian Hockey League a Threat
Russian officials are angry, connected and have plenty of financial backing.
Imagine you're National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman. You've just sent a team that included representatives of the NHLPA to Europe to negotiate a truce to head off a player war with Russia's nascent Kontinental Hockey League, known as the KHL.
While you're pretty much convinced that most of the best players in the world will still want to come to the NHL, live in North America and have a chance to play for the Stanley Cup, the new league, built on the chassis of the old Russian Super League, has been making threatening noises since it hung out its shingle for business a few weeks ago.
Come to think of it, the actions of the new league are really nothing but more of the same from Russian hockey officials, who have been giving the NHL fits for the past couple of years. First, the Russian Hockey Federation refused to renew its player transfer agreement with the NHL a few years ago, an action that has led NHL teams to draft fewer and fewer Russian prospects. Then, working with willing allies in the Russian government, a raft of reforms in Russian employment law have gone into effect, all with the aim of making it more difficult for young prospects to play overseas.
What's worse, the Russians have managed to convince every other European hockey federation of the justice of their cause, and now the entire continent stands united against the NHL on the player transfer issue. The ultimate goal: to create an international player transfer market in hockey that more closely resembles that of international soccer, where players are bought and sold for millions of dollars before you even start paying a salary.
In the past few weeks, the noises out of Russia have gotten more ominous. In interviews with the Western press, KHL president Alexander Medvedev let it slip that KHL teams that sign NHL players currently under contract won't have their salaries count against the league's cap. Then, a steady stream of fringe players started signing contracts with the new league, capped by the signings of Ray Emery, a goalie who one season ago was playing in the Stanley Cup Finals, and future first ballot Hall of Famer Jaromir Jagr.
Then again, you must think, Medvedev and the Russian Hockey Federation are businessmen who can be reasoned with. So your team jets to Switzerland to hammer out an agreement where both leagues respect each other's contracts. An NHL official steps to a podium and declares player peace in our time.
Not so fast. Not even 24 hours after the agreement was official, Alexander Radulov, a winger for the Nashville Predators who fought his way to the NHL through Canadian juniors and the AHL and scored 26 goals last season at the tender age of 21, announced that he was headed back home to Russia to play for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in the KHL -- this despite the fact that he has a year remaining on his contract with Nashville. When asked about the Radulov signing, Medvedev told a Russian newspaper that it was fine by him, as the agreement with the NHL had yet to be signed.
For a commissioner who shut down the NHL for a year in order to achieve "cost certainty" in player salaries, this is starting to look like an awfully big headache.
Over the past few months, I've talked to plenty of Russians about the new league, including one of the few interviews Medvedev has granted to the North American media. I've come away with a few general impressions.
1. The Russians are angry. In the wake of the Cold War, Russian hockey officials believe the NHL took horrible advantage of them and more or less raided the country of hockey talent without paying a fair price, leaving their player development system in ruins. These are prideful people, and they're determined to get the NHL to treat them like equals this time around.
2. Russian hockey is connected. Senior Russian hockey officials such as Slava Fetisov and Vladislav Tretiak are on speaking terms with former Russian president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. They've already managed to get the changes they needed in employment law, and it's safe to say the government is on board with their plans to use the KHL as a vehicle to raise the standards of Russian hockey. Tretiak (head of the Russian Hockey Federation) and Fetisov (Russia's Minister of Sport) are national hockey heroes. It's also safe to say that whatever other changes they believe are needed, they're going to get.
3. Russian hockey has the money. The KHL has the financial backing of several parties, including the treasury of Gazprom, the state-owned energy company. Given the incredible run-up in global energy and commodity prices, the league has money to burn and can most likely match any contract in the NHL. Toss in favorable income tax laws that wouldn't get out of Congress or the Parliament of Canada, and the thought of spending a couple of years in a city like Moscow or St. Petersburg doesn't look half bad.
In short, this is not the Russia that was struggling after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is a Russia that is resurgent, confident and unafraid to flex its muscles.
So what's next for Bettman and the NHL? For starters, I would expect long, hard rounds of negotiations with a very determined opponent that has deep pockets and a long memory.
Over the past few weeks, a number of observers have noted that the KHL represents a challenge to the NHL not unlike the one presented by the World Hockey Association in the 1970s. Thanks to the WHA, player salaries skyrocketed, the NHL was forced to expand to blunt the growth of the WHA, and the trickle of European players arriving in North America turned into a flood.
While I think it's an apt comparison, there are a number of significant differences that have led me to conclude that the threat posed by the KHL is greater than the one once posed by the WHA. Most importantly, most WHA owners were severely undercapitalized. That's not a problem for the deep pockets backing the KHL. Further, Russian franchises like Dynamo and Ska St. Petersburg have been around for decades. They won't be passing into hockey history like the Minnesota Fighting Saints or the Birmingham Bulls anytime soon. And the long-term threat they represent to the NHL won't, either.
Imagine you're NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. When it comes to the KHL, I'll bet you'll want to imagine that you're anybody else.
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