Hockey Night in China

While it isn't necessarily new news, it does bear mention that the country of China will be getting a hockey team in the Kontinental Hockey League starting in September. The team, whose official name is HC Kunlun Red Star, was officially accepted as the newest team in the KHL on June 25, and will be bearing the logo you see above. The head coach will be Vladimir Yurzinov, Jr., and the team will have half of the roster consisting of local national players, the same rule that applies to all KHL teams (e.g. Dinamo Riga has half its roster consisting of Latvians, as they play home games in Latvia). The team will play at the LeSports Center in Beijing, which seats 18,000 people, and was one of the facilities built with the 2008 Olympics in mind originally.

While it's great that hockey is expanding into a non-traditional hockey country like China, it is worth noting that teams in the KHL usually have trouble staying afloat due to money concerns, and except for rich teams like CSKA, Dynamo Moscow, and SKA, those teams usually either take a year off from the KHL or fold. Recent expansion has seen the league go from just a Russian Federation league, expanding into countries such as Croatia, Finland, and Slovakia, with the possibility that China will be joined by South Korea and maybe even Japan. It's too soon to tell if professional hockey in China will succeed, but for now, it is one step towards finding out that answer.