Ice hockey: KHL stars at the weekend in Vienna

Vienna (APA) – The Vienna Capitals are in action this weekend, but fans in Vienna are still offered top-level hockey. On Friday (7:30 pm) and Sunday (7:00 pm), the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) completes two championship games in Kagran. First calls to Slovan Bratislava CSKA Moscow, two days later, Slovaks meet SKA St. Petersburg.

The Russian cross-border KHL is considered the second-strongest league in the world and has sent two top clubs on a promotional tour on the occasion of the "KHL 2018 World Hockey Games" with CSKA and SKA. CSKA is a Soviet record champion (32 titles), the most titled club of the European Cup and twice in the last three years of the Cup final Gagarin, the equivalent of the Cup Stanley of the NHL. The KHL-West division leaders currently have seven Olympic champions in the group, while the team's top scorer is Mikhail Grigorenko, former teammate of Thomas Vanek at the Buffalo Sabers.

The second club of the army is even more important. Saint Petersburg, 2015 and 2017 winner of the Gagarin Cup, led by Pavel Dazjuk. The 40-year-old superstar has played 14 seasons in the NHL and won the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 2002 and 2008. Also included are Nikita Gusew and Nail Jakupow, number one in 2012. of the NHL draft.

KHL started operations in 2008/09 and has 25 teams from seven countries (19 from Russia and one from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Slovakia, Finland and China). But this is not the end of the expansion. "The KHL has a strategy up to 2023, which includes involving powerful Western European clubs in the KHL, many countries are interested in. Initial discussions have already taken place and offers may soon be available. substantiated, "said KHL Vice President Georgij Kobiljanskij at a press conference in Vienna in August.

The degree of internationalization of the league also shows that Austria is the 14th country in which a match of the KHL takes place. Friday near Vienna in Shanghai, Astana, Tallinn, Riga and Khabarovsk played, representing a distance of 8,470 kilometers. The second part of the promotional tour will take place on November 26 and 28 in Zurich, where SKA St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow will meet at Dinamo Riga.