Getting Kontinental

With the hockey season right around the corner (training camp, really), there's no better time than now to try something new in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).  Last year, I went full on into the WHL and the Portland Winterhawks (the weekly piece will return for this coming season), and took on an OHL team in Peterborough (up in the air as to if that weekly piece will return) and even took a brief look into the United States Hockey League (I still have not declared a team at this point, so no weekly segment this season).  This year, I will add the KHL to the list, and I have in fact, declared a team for a weekly segment in the HC SKA Saint Petersburg.

Now, as for what the KHL is about, it is a league that is predominantly based out of Russia and its former republics such as Ukraine and Belarus.  However, expansion has seen it reach the likes of Slovakia, Germany, and this year, Croatia.  The regular season champions are given the Continental Cup while the Yuri Gagarian Cup is given to the champions in the playoffs.  HC Moscow Dynamo is the current two-time defending Gagarian Cup champion and will be looking for three in a row this coming season.  The 28-team league is divided into four division and two conferences: the West comprising of the (Vsevolod) Bobrov and (Anatoli) Tarasov divisions while the East has the (Valeri) Kharlamov and (Arkady) Chernyshev divisions.  As you can see, the divisions are named after people who were influential on hockey in the Soviet-era.  Name players are not lacking in the KHL, as the likes of Alexander Radulov (CSKA), Ilya Kovalchuk (SKA Saint Petersburg), and Alexander Burmistrov (AK Bars Kazan) will call the KHL home for this coming season.

I will get through the teams that make up the KHL and the divisions they play in, as well as who to watch for and odds of success this coming season.