Re: Sherterkin's play in the VHL.
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?11337-Team-budgets-around-the-world!
More evidence that the VHL is superior to the ECHL. The average ECHL player gets $550 per week (that league has a weekly salary cap). Over a 6 month season, that's under $15k. They get free housing, but it's still a terrible living. I have to assume that most of these guys have a second job or are studying in college, otherwise their parents/wives must be very mad at them.
In the VHL, the highest budget for a team is €10 million, the lowest is €1.2 million and the average is €3.1 million. The Euro is worth about 10% more than the dollar, so the average VHL team budget is a shade under $3.5 million. Divided by 20 players, we get $175k per player. If a beer league pays deep into 6-digits, I want to go join that beer league! And in Russia, professional athletes don't even pay an income tax, so making $175k in the VHL is like making over $300k in the AHL.
Presumably if ECHLers could play in the VHL, they would. The salary over 10 times higher and you get to live in a major city like St. Petersburg rather than a backwater like Greenville, South Carolina, which could be exciting to a lot players.
The VHL has significantly higher salaries than Sweden's second tier, the top Austrian League, the top Slovak league, and similar to the top Czech and German leagues. Again, if you could make 2.5 times more in the VHL than in Sweden's second tier, why wouldn't you? Maybe some guys want to stay home, but you've got to believe that at least some would be willing to move 400 miles from Stockholm to St. Petersburg to make 2.5 times more money and not have to pay taxes on it too. Certainly I see no reason any Russian (or other former Soviet) player would leave the VHL with the exception of a couple of guys looking to travel around Europe while living there for a season or two just for fun.
The more circumstantial evidence comes out about the VHL, the more it looks to be a very solid league, probably a good deal above the ECHL. This makes Shesterkin's abuse of the VHL that much more impressive. The season, which starts earlier, is about 40% over in the VHL already.