“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Winston Churchill

This quote would impress an intelligent high school senior.

It’s the most banal statement about Russia that a person can encounter, and I say this as a lover of quotes, an admirer of Winston Churchill and a student of the former Soviet Union. But, as boring as it is, the quote is useful for our purposes here because of how wrong Churchill was.

Russia is not a riddle or a mystery or an enigma.

In fact, the situation in Russia is quite simple: it’s a gangsters playground, partially populated by people who don’t seem to care all that much.

These gangsters have poisoned every conceivable enterprise in Russian society, including the increasingly obnoxious, and potentially threatening, Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).

Americans responded with a collective sigh of relief when the Soviet Union crumbled, and why wouldn’t we? “We aren’t going to be communists anymore” is always a good thing to hear an enemy say, isn’t it?

Not necessarily. Not when “we’re going to be gangsters now” is the next self-appointment.

We don’t have to worry about Russian ICBM’s launching from silos outside Moscow anymore, we just have to worry about jihadist governments conscripting disgruntled, Russian nuclear scientists. We don’t have to worry about Russian spies stealing our secrets as much as we have to worry about Russian journalists being murdered for daring to criticize the Putin-regime. And, of course, we don’t have to worry about Russian players taking jobs from North American players as much as we have to worry about losing Ilya Kovalchuk to SKA St. Petersburg and Pavel Datsyuk to CSKA Moscow.

The KHL may not be a “red menace” but it is a menace nonetheless.

While Alexei Kovalev, the frustrating wizard, has a history of making remarks that were not perfect representations of reality, his recent comments about the KHL are still interesting:

“Even if I was offered a role (to promote the Games), I wouldn’t take it. At this point, I want nothing to do with Russian hockey. There are a lot of people who come to the hockey world in Russia who don’t have any idea. It’s all family relationships: ‘I got this job, I can get you a job on this team, too,’ and that person doesn’t know anything about hockey. It’s pretty much if you get hurt in the KHL, you get traded or bought out. You expect that. They’re not developing players or teams, they’re running a business.”

When used in this context, the words “relationship” and “business” become dirty. Most fans, regardless of the sport they follow, are aware that teams can profit ENORMOUSLY regardless of their win-loss record. This is wrong and it’s dumb and if it what Kovalev says is true, “win at any cost” is not the mandate of the KHL. “Profit at any cost” is.

“But, Ian. Profiting isn’t synonymous with gangsterism, you stupid hippie,” you might be saying. No it isn’t, but consider what Rick Westhead, reporter for the Toronto Star, had to say about life, and death, in the KHL:

“The 18-year-old hockey phenom slumped over on the team bench.

If Alexei Cherapanov wasn’t dead, he would be in a matter of moments.

A first-round draft pick of the New York Rangers who was still playing with the Russian club Avangard Omsk, Cherapanov had suffered a fatal heart attack during the final moments of an Oct. 13, 2008, Continental Hockey League (KHL) game in Chekhov, a bedroom community south of Moscow.

Canadian Reid Simpson, a former NHL player who worked as Chekhov’s assistant general manager, sensed something was horribly wrong and scrambled from his team’s box seats down to the ice.

By the time he got there, Cherapanov’s body had already been taken outside and placed on the pavement. Dozens of spectators, smoking cigarettes, walked over and snapped photos on their cellphones of the lifeless teenager’s body.

Fifteen minutes later — a full 45 minutes after his collapse — the paramedics who hovered over Cherapanov’s corpse drove him to a nearby hospital.

Doctors were helpless. The hockey player was clearly dead, but that didn’t register with Nikolai, the Chekhov KHL team’s owner.

Nikolai, whose family name remains a mystery even to his own employees, burst through the emergency-room doors. “How can this happen? Bring him back,” Nikolai yelled at the doctors, according to Simpson.

The doctors understandably panicked.