Do you mean the NHL and KHL?

If so I think a merger is unlikely in my lifetime (10 years...20?) If the KHL doesn't collapse within a couple of years under the weight of its own greed and hubris then they might some kind of amicable truce eventually. But I bet there's a lot of blood left on the carpet first, only figuratively speaking (I hope!)

I assume that he meant the Central Hockey League, imagining highly fraught rivalries developing between the likes of the Bossier-Shrieveport Mudbugs and Dinamo Riga. Perhaps a highly anticipated finals between the Tulsa Oilers and Metallurg Magnitogorsk.

I think it's the Champions Hockey league, which I have grown used to calling the Champions League. That's the UEFA CL-style thing run by the IIHF, and funded by Gazprom.

Kummola's tentacles are pretty extensive round here, muuk. I get the feeling that if the KHL was needed to make his Sorsapuisto thing work, he would persuade Ilves to join up. Tappara could probably fund it themselves, one of their co-owners is an arms dealing tax exile apparently worth billions, but he doesn't seem to give much of a fuck at the moment.

Kummola was also the stalking horse sent by the European federations to the current IIHF president to articulate and emphasise their concerns about the NHL. He would be a good weather vane for their intentions, and as I said, his influence in Tampere is extensive.

UA: I'm currently torn between my confidence that they will end up like all commodity exporters, and a Lucas-lite fear that these bastards might actually be very powerful in Europe in the near future. I could be wrong, most Russians I meet are great, but the rich ones are quite disturbingly arrogant and full of hubris.

BaN reads me right, though Reed's alternative does provide a certain allure.

Kummola's position as the de facto power in Finnish ice hockey isn't in question. However, in this particular case I regard any club joining the KHL as being recklessly close to financial suicide. No-one, Kummola included, is going to be able to persuade any club's owners to make such a step.*

* This presumes that he would wish to, and I can't think of a good reason why he would.

Time for another swipe at the KHL's plans for expansion westward by means of looking at the crowd figures for the Nordic Trophy so far. This is an annual pre-season tournament featuring 10 of the leading teams from Finland and Sweden, 5 from each. The gate figures so far are (only 7 of the teams have played at home up to now):

............................P..Total...Avg
1. Kärpät.............3..11317..3772
2. Färjestads BK..1...1795..1795
3. Jokerit.............3...4167..1389
4. HIFK................3...3795..1265
5. Linköpings HC..1...1200..1200
6. TPS..................4...4662..1166
7. Tappara...........3...3284..1095

Our figures are dire and the rest are plain ridiculous. As a comparison, our budget would be made based on a main season average gate of about 5500; Jokerit's would be in the region of 9000. Even allowing for the fact that such tournaments are never great crowd pullers, given that half the teams are well known to all ice hockey following Finns and there is some level of identification with the Swedish teams through Finns playing there and access via TV, these figures are staggeringly bad. How many would come to watch some anonymous Russian outfit even if it were a meaningful league game?

You're right, but that's just a pre-season tournament isn't it? I mean who watches hockey in August? If you look at it that way then the crowd figures aren't too bad.

The Champions League jerseys have been unveiled, and they will be Reebock made and sponsor free (apart from the Reebok stuff, obviously). You can see them here:
http://www.iihf.com/index.php?id=1813

It so happens that we were in Bern over the weekend, where they got over 5,000 for their last pre-season friendly against Langnau.

They also announced that the first match in the newly-expanded arena will be a sell out: 17,131 will watch them take on Biel later this week. And they've sold over 13,000 season tickets.

Ilves got less than 5,000 for their First Round game three against Kärpät last year, almost certainly Raimo Helminen's last game at hakametsä. The difference between pre-season and proper stuff is probably similar, especially when you factor in the new stadium in Berne. Kärpät are getting more than half their average gate, but that probably reflects the lack of a decent football team in Oulu.

Bern are a definite outlier, but an interesting one nonetheless, surely the only major European city outside of the Nordic countries, the Czech Republic or Russia where the hockey team is clearly more popular than their footballing counterparts.

However, they outdrew every other team in the league by close to 3 to 1 before they expanded the arena.

Latest available statistics here.

It's just the premier tournament in the whole of Scandinavia featuring 10 well known and well supported teams. Who watches ice hockey in August? Judging by the figures not very many people. Who goes to watch teams from halfway across Russia that they've never heard of? If the KHL are going to pull in top Finnish or Swedish clubs then they're going to have to convince those club owners that crowds are still going to be good even when the fans are offered something which is well away from the usual. Good crowd figures in the Nordic Tournament (and these figures aren't anywhere near good) might be the first step in persuading the owners that the fans might be interested in something other than the September to March bread and butter of SM-liiga. They're not, and until something somewhere instils confidence into the club owners (and the play off figures BC mentions certainly won't help) -- and that's just the first step of many -- then the KHL will remain an essentially Russian league.

Personally, I am tempted to think that the KHL's long-term expansion plans are more likely to target the very same clubs that the NHL would consider for any "European Division". "NHL class" arenas in major cities with good transport links and attractive television markets being the prime criteria in this respect.

Think SC Bern, Eisbaren Berlin, Hamburg Freezers and Slavia Praha, rather than Karpat.

You may well be right.

I don't take the Nordic thing seriously, I mean how much extra revenue will they get? Gazprom are offering hefty prize money for the Champions League, while the Nordic League would rely on the interest generating extra income.

And the CL will be live on MTV3, with no filler games as the dead rubber with the third team in the group will not take place on the same day for both Blues and Kärpät. If they market it right, and they are planning on doing a much better job than the Nordic trophy has done, then it has a chance of success. Here's a good article about the Nordic league from a Finnish perspective.

I continue to think that an open SM Liiga with automatic promotion and relegation disregarding non-hockey criteria, combined with a rich and serious Champions league, would be the best thing for everyone concerned. I couldn't fucking stand a Tappara-only Tampere, anyway.

"Nordic League" sounds like an American pro-Fascist organization.

Bolshy press release from the IIHF:

QUOTE:
A meeting with between the IIHF and nine IIHF member federations and leagues was held in Zurich in today.

The meeting was attended by representatives from associations and leagues from Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland.

On July 18, 2008, the IIHF suspended six players from all IIHF sanctioned international competition and further international transfers, pending the legal investigation.

During the meeting the Kontinental Hockey League withdrew its claims pertaining to the following players:

Nikita Filatov (RUS)
Signed by NHL club Columbus Blue Jackets – from KHL club CSKA Moscow.

Tomas Mojzis (CZE)
Signed by NHL club Minnesota Wild – from KHL club Sibir Novosibirsk.

Jason Krog (CAN)
Signed by NHL club Vancouver Canucks – from KHL club Severstal Cherepovets.

Fedor Fedorov (RUS)
Signed by NHL club New Jersey Devils – from KHL club Dynamo Moscow.

Viktor Tikhonov (RUS)
Signed by NHL club Phoenix Coyotes – from KHL club Severstal Cherepovets.

The IIHF suspension regarding these players is lifted with immediate effect.

The meeting agreed that the unsolved case of Alexander Radulov will go to an applicable court or – if all included parties agree – to arbitration, whose verdict can not be overruled.

The KHL furthermore informed that the league is disputing the signings of the following players by the NHL:

Andrei Loktionov – signed by NHL club Los Angeles from KHL club Lokomotiv Yaroslavl
Vyacheslav Voinov – signed by NHL club Los Angeles from KHL club Traktor Chelyabinsk
Andrei Mayorov – signed by NHL club Columbus from KHL club Ak Bars Kazan

The meeting agreed that also these cases will be submitted to an applicable court or – if all included parties agree – to arbitration, whose verdict can not be overruled.

The meeting also concluded the following:

++ As of today, the KHL will continue to respect all legally valid contracts signed with NHL clubs and also all legally valid contracts signed with IIHF clubs, subject to the NHL not signing KHL registered players under legally valid contracts.

++ The participating national member associations and leagues expressed the wish to sign a separate player transfer agreement with the KHL and as soon as possible initiate discussions with the NHL and the NHLPA about formulating a new player transfer agreement between the IIHF, KHL and the NHL & NHLPA.

++ The European IIHF member associations formulated an ambition to create a standard player contract in order to strengthen the validity of contracts in IIHF affiliated leagues.

This thread is a large part of the research for the latest post at http://hockeyinfinland.wordpress.com .

So, um, sorry and that.

There was a very staged-looking, queensbury rules-like fight in the HIFK-Jokerit game yesterday, btw. I'll try and find the video.

Not everyone wants NHL-class arenas in Europe.



Typische Berliner Agitprop, as far as I'm concerned, but still not the kind of thing that the Bettmans of the world would like to see.