2018-19 KHL Season Preview

The 11th season of the multinational Kontinental Hockey League will start on 1st September 2018 with the first game, the traditional "Champions Cup", where the incumbent winners of the Gagarin Cup face another top shot from the KHL. Tatarstan's very own Ak Bars Kazan has the honour this year after defeating CSKA Moscow in the final of the 2017-18 season. Their opponents will be SKA St. Petersburg, a team under slight reconstruction after a few of the marquee left the club to seek opportunities elsewhere.

As for the travel, some big news hit the league a few days ago. Avangard Omsk will play most of its home games this season very far away from home in Moscow. Their current rink in Omsk, Arena Omsk, is not fit for KHL purposes at the moment, which has forced a switch to Balashikha Arena in Moscow, more than 2000km away from home. The club will try to stage some open air games in Omsk at least, but that will be for proper winter, which is yet to come.

The Omsk arena switch has two major consequences on travel for visiting teams. First up, the convenience of a triangular road trip involving Omsk, Novosibirsk and Astana as three relatively close destinations far away from Moscow is now gone. Add to that the elimination of the Novokuznezk and Khanty-Mansiysk teams in recent years and the Russian Middle East is suddenly becoming something like a hockey desert. The second consequence is that in a sequence of away matches in Astana and Novosibirsk, teams may now have to travel 2200km one-way to Moscow and back to potentially squeeze in an Avangard fixture. Unless some realignment of the schedules is yet in the making, this could generate quite some movement.

New destinations will be added to the KHL road map this season too and that without the addition of new teams. In an attempt to gain exposure outside the traditional markets, Jokerit will take two home games to Tallinn and Slovan Bratislava will do the same in Vienna. Dinamo Riga, struggling for audiences and success on the ice, will take two home matches to Switzerland, making Zurich the second KHL venue in Switzerland after the one match held in Davos a few years ago.