And then why instead of cutting teams don't move teams to bigger cities? There are so many good, big Russian cities where KHL teams can be based, like Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Saratov, Rostov-on-Don, Voronezh, Volgograd, Tyumen, then you have cities like Ulyanov, Penza, or even Orenburg...
If it was like you said, then we'd have Tyumen or Surgut in instead of Yugra, Lada in Samara, and not in Togliatti (although the city is quite big if I'm not wrong 700K inhabitants), and so on.
I understand you. There are many good Russian cities, no doubt.
The problem is that Russia (Europe) is not America, you can not relocate a club from lets say Cherepovets to Volgograd. Another problem is arena, cities you named do not have big hockey arenas & will not have soon.
The KHL under Chernyshenko, better said Timchenko, is bussiness oriented. The league tries to develop the bussiness. You need full arenas, strong ownership of the clubs & the product interested for broadcasters. Attendance of some clubs is terrible, there is no hope for better tommorows. Yes, CSKA is bad as well. But the club is a world class brand, you need such teams in the league, and has a strong owner. That is a reason why CSKA has more value for the KHL than Novokuznetsk or others. Lets come back to bad attended teams. If these teams have old small arenas, no hope for a contruction of new one, such clubs are bad attended at away games in other cities (not attractive opponent). The city where the club is based is small (compared to other KHL cities) & purchasing power of inhabitants is low. What should the KHL do with them? Especially if a club´s management do not care.
Ownership. Some clubs are simply not able to survive in a big league. The budget is too small. I do not say all clubs should be like SKA, even it would be great, but if your club is not able to reach league´s average... there is something bad. The league is too good for your team. That is another reason why we have an uneven league, no roster limits would fix it. You can limit it, the result would be an exodus of the players, because the rest of the league can not afford them. That we want? But, if you reduce a salary cap to league´s today average & gets rid of club who are not able to reach the level, you can have more parity. Do not forget the decision of the President of the RF:
профессиональный спорт должен зарабатывать на свои нужды сам. To translate, professional sport should finance itself. That is bad? As you know, many teams are financed by the government .... you need to decrease the public funding. How to do it? To take money from all teams. The result is a poor league with exodus of the players. Or to reduce amount of teams & concentrate money into top teams. Of course, there will be a public funding, but the amount will decrease. Because there will be lower teams & those teams will earn more by themself. Of course, these relegating to the VHL will be funded by the government too, but the amount of money will be much lower, the VHL is not so expensive.
The product for broadcasters. I have said many times, Russian TV market is not able to produce so much money from sport as American or in some European countries. The KHL needs to sell the league to foreign broadcasters. How to do it? Of course develop the product - HD, lighting etc. Not easy. Clubs differ each other. For objective reasons, some regional clubs are not able to produce top notch broadcasting. So, you need to get rid of them. Or hope they will fix the problem.... how many years to wait? At the end of a day, what games are broadcasted by foreign broadcasters? Games of foreign KHL club, Jokerit in Finland etc or other top games. For some reason foreign broadcasters are not interested in Lada vs Yugra game, or Neftekhimik vs Severstal. Even Russian Match TV is not. What to do with such matches/clubs? Back to foreign broadcasters - they broadcast games of non-Russian KHL teams, as I said Jokerit in Finland. So, if you bring a team from Germany, Switzeland, Japan, Korea or China, broadcasters from those countries will broadcast games of those teams. Plus, they buy other top KHL games too. That is another reason for expansion. And if you want to expand, you need to cut somewhere. Or to expand and expand and expand... in a situation where there are not so many good enough players on the market.
That is a few remarks.
Contraction of smaller Russian teams by the KHL does not mean that Russian hockey will be killed. On the contrary, lower division - the VHL - will get stronger.
