Really it’s always been that if you were an athlete professionally playing one of the major team sports (with the exception of soccer) to truly say that you've "made it" you had to play in one of the major leagues in North America. That is why the NBA, NHL and MLB are filled with athletes from around the world. Even the NFL, playing "American Football" as its known in most of the rest of the world in recent years has begun attracting players from around the world.
Of course with the notoriety of playing the North American major leagues came money that few other places could match (again the exception is soccer of course). That is why Russia's new Continental Hockey League is so interesting to me since it is the league's intention to match, and exceed, the salaries offered by the National Hockey League.
Many of the CHL's teams are owned by large Russian corporations, like energy giant Gazprom - corporations with very, very large wallets. The CHL has said it is their intention to bid for players currently on the rosters of NHL teams. A couple of years ago, when the NHL lost an entire season due to a labor dispute, a number of the league’s top players traveled to Russia for the season, earning millions of dollars in the process, so the idea of star players playing for the new Russian league isn’t that far-fetched.
And, of course, there’s an element of politics involved. Having a world-class professional sports league based within its borders would be another way for Russia to show it has left the economic chaos of the 1990s behind. Meanwhile, CHL president Alexander Medvedev (not to be confused with Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev said about the CHL’s challenge to the NHL “a unipolar world is not good; we should have a multipolar world”, a riff off one of former Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favorite lines about world politics.
Russia’s Continental Hockey League is set to start play in September.
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