KHL Season 2023-2024

[vorky]

SKA & Sibir should open their new venues
All-time records to beat: total regular season attendance 5 395 000, average RS attendance 6492, total playoffs attendance 729 000, average playoffs attendance 8659

Click to read more...

 

[hansomreiste]

Excited to see how Lada will fare and Sibir in a... well, better-looking barn the team definitely deserves. Though the best thing is probably inter-conference pairs from second round on. Better late than never. Western conference usually offers no excitement other than "who'll win conference finals, SKA or CSKA?" so this problem is solved now. Potential QF or SF ties between Salavat-SKA, Sibir-Loko, Avangard-CSKA etc. sounds much more exciting. Financially speaking KHL will probably never get to become a self-sustaining league but at least they are making some good moves in terms of providing more parity & excitement for fans.

 

[Rigafan]

Excited to see how Lada will fare and Sibir in a... well, better-looking barn the team definitely deserves. Though the best thing is probably inter-conference pairs from second round on. Better late than never. Western conference usually offers no excitement other than "who'll win conference finals, SKA or CSKA?" so this problem is solved now. Potential QF or SF ties between Salavat-SKA, Sibir-Loko, Avangard-CSKA etc. sounds much more exciting. Financially speaking KHL will probably never get to become a self-sustaining league but at least they are making some good moves in terms of providing more parity & excitement for fans.

Lada already said its going to be hard to find quality players so quickly this first season so that is nice and honest of them if they end up dead last! Still I'm happy to see them return.

 

[vorky]

Andrej Podkonický joins Avangard Omsk coaching staff as Senior/Assistant Coach. He worked as Assistant Coach for Slovan Bratislava & the Slovak National Team at 2023 IIHF Worlds.

 

[alko]

Andrej Podkonický joins Avangard Omsk coaching staff as Senior/Assistant Coach. He worked as Assistant Coach for Slovan Bratislava & the Slovak National Team at 2023 IIHF Worlds.

Unfortunately, we dont have a Dislike Button.

 

[eal]

Is Kunlun continuing to play at home in Russia next season?

 

[vorky]

Schedule released, 782 regular season games

 

[ViD]

Will be interesting to see if SKA can sell out the new arena on a consistent basis. I kinda doubt it. If they can, they will be the most attended club in hockey

 

[vorky]

Will be interesting to see if SKA can sell out the new arena on a consistent basis. I kinda doubt it. If they can, they will be the most attended club in hockey

If looking at their GC 2023 run, SKA had full-house for all games. Perhaps you know that GC 2023 was the most attended (total attendance) league´s playoff ever.

SKA will have a projected total regular season attendance around 700 000 next season. For example it is 30% of total attendance of ALL regular season games in top Swiss league (NL) as the best attended European league after KHL (by total numbers). Would not be surprised if total attendance of SKA+Sibir+Avangard was around 1,4 million next regular season. Reminding you that total attendance of all games in Liiga, TELH, DEL, SHL & NL is from 1,9 million to 2,5 million. The KHL record is 5,39 million.

The KHL attendance will just go up over years, especially with all new venues under construction.

 

[Garl]

Yeah, worked out very well in South Africa

 

[eal]

Interesting to see some teams naturalizing foreigners as Russians to get around the 3 foreigners per team rule.

 

[Albatros]

Apparently a military drone crashed into an office tower directly next to the CSKA arena tonight (and another a few blocks away from the old Luzhniki arena).

 

[jcbio11]

Apparently a military drone crashed into an office tower directly next to the CSKA arena tonight (and another a few blocks away from the old Luzhniki arena).

Was the arena damaged? Any reaction by the club? I mean they are "the army club".

 

[Kshahdoo]

Sochi preseason tournament starts on August, 3rd. Team Russia U23 will play along with SKA, Omsk, Sochi, and Vladivostok. Ivan Demidov, Dmitry Buchelnikov, Mikhail Gulyayev are on Team Russia roster. Michkov will play for SKA.

 

[Albatros]

Was the arena damaged? Any reaction by the club? I mean they are "the army club".

No word of anything, but probably also no more than minor debris damage to the arena. The drone destroyed the top floors of an office tower of the "Leroy Merlin" complex on the left while the low glass building on the right is the CSKA Arena:

 

[Kshahdoo]

388k people follow SKA on the biggest Russian social network, Ak Bars 243k, Avangard 205k, Salavat 160k, CSKA 92.5k ... Zenit has 1.2M followers, difference between football and hockey...

 

[Rigafan]

388k people follow SKA on the biggest Russian social network, Ak Bars 243k, Avangard 205k, Salavat 160k, CSKA 92.5k ... Zenit has 1.2M followers, difference between football and hockey...

Soccer is much easier to understand and much more accessible, though, so it's always going to have more 'fans' than hockey or anything else, really.

Plus the amount of non hockey supporting nations that will follow Zenit for example will be much greater than the amount of hockey fans available to follow SKA

 

[Kshahdoo]

Soccer is much easier to understand and much more accessible, though, so it's always going to have more 'fans' than hockey or anything else, really.

Plus the amount of non hockey supporting nations that will follow Zenit for example will be much greater than the amount of hockey fans available to follow SKA

In general, football fans are way more hardcore in Russia. They understand the sport way better than hockey fans.

 

[AlexanderSemin21]

In general, football fans are way more hardcore in Russia. They understand the sport way better than hockey fans.

I am not denying your statement, but sometimes i look highlights of the RPL and the stadiums are empty

 

[ult]

I am not denying your statement, but sometimes i look highlights of the RPL and the stadiums are empty

The reason is Fan ID - https://www.mos.ru/en/news/item/119813073/

"A Fan ID is a document required for visiting football matches of the Russian Premier League and buying regular or season tickets. "

They introduced it last year, and people didn't like it. Russian Cup matches on the other hand didn't require Fan ID so they had a much better attendance.

 

[eal]

Quite the debacle with Ivan Fedotov and CSKA. I wonder what the army club and the KHL will do from here. Presumably the only solutions is for Fedotov to go to Philadelphia or dissolve his contract with them? The KHL surely doesn't want to open a can of worms with the NHL where neither league recognizes contracts in the other?!

IIHF rules in favor of the Flyers, saying Russian goalie Ivan Fedotov has a valid NHL contract

The International Ice Hockey Federation has ruled in favor of the Philadelphia Flyers by agreeing that Russian goaltender Ivan Fedotov had a valid NHL contract for the upcoming season.

apnews.com

 

[Caser]

Quite the debacle with Ivan Fedotov and CSKA. I wonder what the army club and the KHL will do from here. Presumably the only solutions is for Fedotov to go to Philadelphia or dissolve his contract with them? The KHL surely doesn't want to open a can of worms with the NHL where neither league recognizes contracts in the other?!

IIHF rules in favor of the Flyers, saying Russian goalie Ivan Fedotov has a valid NHL contract

The International Ice Hockey Federation has ruled in favor of the Philadelphia Flyers by agreeing that Russian goaltender Ivan Fedotov had a valid NHL contract for the upcoming season.

apnews.com

In this situation the 'KHL vs NHL' thing might be quite secondary comparing to the potential 'KHL vs RIHF/IIHF' conflict.

 

[jcbio11]

Quite the debacle with Ivan Fedotov and CSKA. I wonder what the army club and the KHL will do from here. Presumably the only solutions is for Fedotov to go to Philadelphia or dissolve his contract with them? The KHL surely doesn't want to open a can of worms with the NHL where neither league recognizes contracts in the other?!

IIHF rules in favor of the Flyers, saying Russian goalie Ivan Fedotov has a valid NHL contract

The International Ice Hockey Federation has ruled in favor of the Philadelphia Flyers by agreeing that Russian goaltender Ivan Fedotov had a valid NHL contract for the upcoming season.

apnews.com

Absolutely agree.

Fedotov deserves to be able to flee that place, especially after the way they treated him. Despicable behavior.

 

[Hanji]

Absolutely agree.

Fedotov deserves to be able to flee that place, especially after the way they treated him. Despicable behavior.

Fedotov should be free to do what he wants. And he chose to resign with CSKA Moscow. I know that makes the Dominik Haseks of the world seethe, but screw those imbeciles
The question now is will Fedotov be forced to go to Philly due to the IIHf's decision; a place he couldve traveled to last month if he wanted.

 

[eal]

Actually Fedotov can't simply do what he wants given he had a valid contract with Philadelphia. He needed to negotiate a termination of Philadelphia contract before signing another. What is surprising is that CSKA would have known this but signed him anyway.