European league info

RUSSIAN K.H.L. Widely considered the world’s second-best league, the Kontinental Hockey League is the present-day home to the great clubs of the Soviet era. But where once teams were sponsored by the likes of the army, the Interior Ministry and labor unions, today they are sponsored by national energy companies, regional energy companies and the billionaire owners of energy companies.

During the 2004-5 lockout, Russia’s top circuit was called the Superliga. Vincent Lecavalier, Brad Richards and Nikolai Khabibulin arrived from Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay to help Ak Bars Kazan celebrate the 1,000th birthday of the Tatarstan capital with a championship, but it failed. Instead Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk helped Dynamo Moscow win the title.

In 2008 the league reorganized as the K.H.L. under the direction of the Gazprom executive Alexander Medvedev, with grand visions of expansion into Asia and Western Europe; the Kremlin leader Vladimir V. Putin even called the league “an instrument of Russian foreign policy.”

Today the league has indeed expanded beyond the Soviet borders, to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But it has suffered some catastrophic setbacks. In 2008 Avangard Omsk’sAlexei Cherepanov, 18, died of heart failure when the arena he was playing in had inadequate medical equipment. Last year, the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team was killed in a plane crash, highlighting the alarming danger of air travel in Russia.

Still, the 26-team league is the lockout home of Datsyuk at CSKA Moscow, Alex Ovechkin at Dynamo, Ilya Kovalchuk at SKA St. Petersburg and Evgeni Malkin at Metallurg Magnitogorsk.





FINNISH SM-LIIGA Because of the impenetrability of the Finnish language to outsiders, few non-Finns skate in the 14-team league, the notable exceptions being Brian Rafalski and Tim Thomas. Still, it is generally ranked the second-best league in Europe and has produced the N.H.L. snipers Jari Kurri and Teemu Selanne and several star goalies like Miikka Kiprusoff, Pekka Rinne and Niklas Backstrom.

The league’s most famous club is Jokerit Helsinki (yes, it means Jokers), but one of its most successful is Karpat, in the northern university town of Oulu. Karpat (the name means Stoats, a kind of weasel or ermine) won the championship in 2004-5 with only one locked-out N.H.L. player in the lineup. This time it will have at least two — Carolina’s Jussi Jokinen, a Karpat alumnus, and San Jose’s Jason Demers.





SWEDISH ELITSERIEN On Friday the Swedish government declared illegal theElitserien’s ban on signing locked-out players to short-term contracts, so the influx of Swedish N.H.L. stars to the 12-team league is on.

In 2004-5, almost 75 N.H.L. players spent the lockout in the Elitserien, including Henrik Zetterberg, the Sedin twins and even Zdeno Chara. Daniel Alfredsson arrived from Ottawa to help Frolunda Gothenburg win that year’s championship — although it was really the work of a young goalie named Henrik Lundqvist, who racked up a record .962 save percentage and was named the league’s most valuable player. Lundqvist, now the backbone of the Rangers, may return to his hometown club.

Each year the Swedish champions receive the Le Mat Trophy, donated in 1926 by Raoul Le Mat, an American film director considered a founding father of Swedish hockey, and by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.





CZECH EXTRALIGA Tight finances have dogged the Czech Republic’s top league for years, but it maintains proud traditions that stretch back to 1909, the year the first Czechoslovakian champions were crowned. Today, Prague is home to the eternal rivals Sparta and Slavia, with Slavia skating at the O2 Arena, at 18,000 the second-largest arena for hockey in Europe.

In 2004-5, Pardubice won the championship, reinforced by the locked-out N.H.L. players Milan Hejduk and Ales Hemsky. But this time the marquee club of the 14-team league is Kladno, owned and led on the ice by Jaromir Jagr, and bolstered by Tomas Plekanec, Marek Zidlicky, Tomas Kaberle and Jiri Tlusty. So popular is Jagr’s team of all-stars that its debut game was moved from Kladno’s Winter Stadium (capacity 8,600, but with only 1,600 seats) to the O2 in Prague, where nearly 16,000 turned out.





SWISS N.L.A. The 12-team National League A is a popular destination for lockout refugees, who have enjoyed the quality of life in Switzerland, as well as the traditions and lively fan culture of Swiss hockey. Jason Spezza will pay more for his insurance than he will make skating for Rapperswil-Jona Lakers, but he said he picked it so his wife and two young daughters could go, too. “I wanted to make sure I was playing in Switzerland,” he said.

Joe Thornton and Rick Nash so enjoyed themselves winning the 2004-5 championship for Davos that they eagerly returned to the mountain resort club last week. (It helps that Thornton married a Swiss woman he met during the last lockout.)

But it is the terrace culture at games that impresses most, like a soccer crowd taken indoors, performing elaborately choreographed chants and flag displays. Well, not entirely indoors: the rink at the tiny village club Ambri-Piotta is partly outdoors, but the cold does not stop its fans from waving gigantic banners celebrating rebel heroes like Geronimo and Che Guevara.





SLOVAKIAN EXTRALIGA Less wealthy than its Czech counterpart, the Slovakian Extraliga lost its only big-time club this season. Slovan Bratislava, the flagship since 1921, jumped to the K.H.L., leaving 10 mostly small-town clubs to vie for the domestic championship.

As of Friday afternoon, only one locked-out N.H.L. player had signed: Tomas Tatar of Detroit. He will play for Dukla Trencin — but only until the Grand Rapids Griffins’ American Hockey League season begins Oct. 12.





GERMAN D.E.L. The 14-team Deutsche Eishockey Liga has long been a decent-paying, comfortable home for North Americans looking for a better hockey life than riding the buses in the minors. Eisbären Berlin won the championship in six of the last eight years, including 2004-5, when the Polar Bears were led by Olaf Kolzig and Erik Cole. But how can any hockey fan resist a league that includes a team called Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg?



