The KHL Continues to Expand, Improve

The league starts the new season with 28 teams, having added Admiral in Vladivostok and Medvescak in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb. The teams now play in eight nations across a staggering nine time zones, stretching from Central Europe to Asia. In June, a group of billionaires with personal ties to Putin bought a stake in one of Finland’s top teams, Jokerit, along with its arena in Helsinki, clearing the way for it to join the league next season and creating a furor at home.

“I’m not the most popular man in Finland,” Harry Harkimo, Jokerit’s chairman, said in a telephone interview of his decision to jump to the K.H.L. The league’s level of play, he said, was already competitive with the N.H.L. and would raise Jokerit’s level, he explained. With teams also in Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the league has now grown beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union, challenging, at least in part, its reputation as simply a glorified rebranding of now-defunct all-Russian Superliga.

“It’s a loss for the league,” Harkimo said, referring to his country’s professional league, SM-Liiga, “but this is part of globalization and a business plan. I can’t think about what others think.”