I'm sure you've heard about all the great plans for a super league that would challenge the NHL in Europe. Well, let me just say that the NHL already as several great challengers in Europe. There's the Swedish league, the Finnish league, the Russian league, the Swiss league, the German league ... you get the point.
It all depends on how you define the challenge, I suppose.
However, while thousands of Finns, Swedes, and Czechs begin their days by checking the NHL scores from the night before, the local leagues are also doing better than ever.
But the dream of "NHL Europe" lives on.
The International Ice Hockey Federation is launching its own cup tournament, the Champions Hockey League (CHL), next season, with the winner pocketing over a million euro and a place in the Victoria Cup, a challenge tournament with an NHL team. But a cup tournament with a dozen games is far cry from becoming NHL Europe.
The Russian league is trying to expand to include teams in the neighboring countries, such as Finland. The big Russian oil and gas companies have money, and are already paying their stars NHL equivalent salaries, and for those who're just at the AHL/NHL brink, the Russian salaries may be better than the current AHL salary.
If a player gets 900 000 dollars after taxes and excluding the famously handsome bonuses in Russia, it's easy to understand why that makes that league attractive , at least for a single guy. Not many of the western players have moved to Russia with their families.
Is that a competitor to the NHL?
Yes, it is.
In Russia.
Is that a competitor to other European leagues?
Yes, it is.
Will the NHL get the best players in the future?
Yes, it will.
Risto Pakarinen is a Finnish freelance journalist based in Stockholm, Sweden. He writes regularly for such publications as The Hockey News, nhl.com, and the International Ice Hockey Federations website at iihf.com. He's also the author of two hockey books, Joukkue vailla vertaa about Finland's first World Champion team, and Off The Post: hockey stories from across the world, a collection of his columns on nhl.com.