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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Ruble crisis hits hard in KHL

Player contracts not worth as much now

Associated Press

MOSCOW – The Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League saw itself as the oil-rich rival to the NHL, offering a tempting, if less prestigious, alternative to playing in North America.

As the league planned to expand as far as Britain, the money on offer even attracted Russian stars like Ilya Kovalchuk and Alexander Radulov, who walked out on lucrative NHL deals to return home.

Then came the crash of the ruble last week.

The financial crisis has threatened the plans of players like former Vancouver Canucks goaltender Curtis Sanford, who came to Russia to save for his retirement.

“It’s just really happened all of a sudden,” the 35-year-old Sanford said. “These are some things that you don’t expect when you sign a contract. Right now, you just have to ride the rolls of how it’s going and hopefully it stabilizes and gets better.”

The ruble had been sliding against the dollar for most of the year against the backdrop of low oil prices and economic sanctions against Russia, but went into freefall. Following a slight recovery, it has still lost almost half of its value against the dollar this year.

With KHL rules stipulating ruble-only contracts, that is bad news for the many U.S., Canadian and European imports on the rosters of the league’s 22 Russian teams. Russia’s economic woes are starting to spread into neighboring nations like Belarus and Kazakhstan, potentially shrinking the incomes for players on KHL teams there.

Some players have already started to rebel. Revealing that he had not been paid for three months at Russian club Yugra Khanty-Mansiisk, except small amounts to buy food, forward Ilari Melart told the Ilta Sanomat newspaper in his native Finland that he was not “in Siberia for charity.”

Another Finn, goaltender Mikko Koskinen, was accused by Russian media earlier this month of having refused to play for Sibir Novosibirsk because his ruble salary had dropped. Koskinen, who denies the claims, was traded to SKA St. Petersburg two days later.

For the first time since the league was founded in 2008, KHL management has been forced to deny the league could collapse.