Of Stars and Playoff Berths

Join Damien Cox at 12:15 p.m. Monday for a live hockey Q&A.

Yes, it's amazing to watch the Phoenix Coyotes vying for first in the west. Folks will be reading this as a comment on the coaching and ownership abilities of Wayne Gretzky, and you can see why.

But in terms of departed star power and its results, it's hard to look past the Atlanta Thrashers, who seemed to be giving up on their season when sniper Ilya Kovalchuk was dealt to the New Jersey Devils but instead have now closed to within one point of an Eastern Conference playoff berth.

The Thrashers swept the stumbling, goaltender-less Flyers over the weekend after beating both Buffalo and Ottawa last week and are hot on the trail of eighth place Boston. While ex-Leafs may be killing the Calgary Flames — could you believe Vesa Toskala got the start last night in Minny? — they're powering the Thrashers' playoff drive as Nik Antropov and Pavel Kubina play key roles.

GM Don Waddell took the public hit for not signing Kovalchuk, but the reality was this wasn't a team that could pay one player $9- or $10 million a season and hope to flourish. Now, without Kovalchuk, they're playing better hockey.

So much for star power.

Meanwhile, Kovalchuk's future as an unrestricted free agent will be fascinating to watch. He didn't exactly light it up last week when he came to town with the Devils. Despite all the talk that the KHL will come calling with an offer of $15 million a season, some attendance numbers out of the IIHF this morning provided some sobering news about just how big the Russia-based league actually is.

St. Petersburg leads the KHL in attendance and they only draw about 9,400, sixth best in all of Europe and less than half of what the top European team, Bern in Switzerland, draws. AK Bars Kazan, one of the better known franchises, has average attendance of around 5,000 a game. Avangard Omsk employs Jaromir Jagr and attracts about 9,200 per match.

Given these numbers — the KHL is ambitiously looking to expand to the Czech Republic and Sweden — you have to wonder about exactly how real the threat is that somebody is going to come calling with huge money to throw at Kovalchuk. His agent, Jay Grossman, is no doubt thrilled to have the KHL as leverage, but it will be interesting if he can use a Russian team to create a bidding war for a player only a handful of NHL clubs — if that — will care to throw big money offers at.

The dwindling number of Russians that are in the NHL seem inclined to stay here. That includes Nikolai Kulemin of the Maple Leafs, who in a story by Paul Hunter of The Star on the weekend said he's not looking to jump back to his homeland as a free agent this summer.

Right now there are only 26 Russians in the NHL, about a third of the number there were a decade ago. Whether the KHL actually ever becomes a rival league to the NHL is a story that has yet to play out.

Comments

[MP]

This is fascinating stuff, but now I have a follow up question: Where did all the Russians go?

Were they all on-the-bubble players destined for the A or the E or are those players good enough to command a space on an NHL roster? If so, what nations benefitted and displaces the departed Russians?

I think what we're really seeing is the limited value of "star power" wattage. While it's almost certain that you need a star to power your team through the regular season and playoffs, victory is also brought on the backs of the 2nd/3rd/4th lines. The difference for this subset of players is that the market for their skills appears to be inefficient and their qualities are perceived as esoteric and therefore unmeasured in the sports pages.

[pk2can]

I like Damien's blog, but he misses the point here. The number of fans attending the KHL games is almost completely irrelevant! It's not about the ticket revenue. The money for KHL salaries come from completely other sources. I'm not sure how much exactly a KHL ticket costs, but I think it around 10-15$. The money come from the owners - oil and natural gas monsters. For them having a KHL team is a kind of a ticket to a club of oligarchs and a possibility to expand their welth even further. Plus, the current Russian government supports the idea of competing with the US (or NHL for that matter) so it supports the KHL efforts in every way, including finances. So I won't be surprised if Kovalchuk does get a few crazy offers from KHL. Frankly, I won't miss him.

[howie]

the only reason Atlanta is closing in on a playoff position is because they are in the Eastern conference. A plethora of very bad teams. In the West, teams now out of a playoff position (ninth to 13th) would be home free if they could transfer to the East.

[other mark]

I learned all I needed to know about the KHL while watching some of their players perform at the Olympic games. With few exceptions, they would all be fringe NHL players. So, kudos to them for getting likely higher salaries and play closer to home. But really, I don't see that league going to toe to toe with the NHL any time soon and I certainly can't see the league improving through expansion. "Expansion" in this case translates into the Russian equivalent of "contain financial losses at the expense of new suckers... I mean investors".