Relegated League: Why the KHL is losing stars and increasingly finding itself at the center of scandals

The new KHL season begins against the background of several high-profile stories at once. In August, the league denied seasonal accreditation to a number of well-known journalists, including Alexey Shevchenko, a special correspondent for Sport-Express. But it's not just about this conflict. The KHL has accumulated questions in very different areas, from refereeing and new rules to salary caps and so—called advertising contracts.

There are problems on the ice itself. The league continues to lose young leaders who leave for North America, while it receives almost no stars of comparable scale in the opposite direction. At the same time, 16 out of 22 teams are in the playoffs, so the intrigue of the regular season often ends long before it finishes. Izvestia is looking into what problems the KHL is facing in the 2026/27 season.

The stars are coming out

You don't need complicated statistics to notice one of the main changes in recent years. It's enough to remember who played in the KHL before. Over the years, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Datsyuk, Sergey Mozyakin, Alexander Radulov, and Danis Zaripov performed simultaneously in Russia. There are also plenty of famous hockey players now — the same Radulov, Nikita Gusev, Vadim Shipachev, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Vladimir Tkachev. But there are fewer players who can be the face of the entire league.

The outflow of young people is especially noticeable. The strongest Russian hockey players perceive the KHL as a stage before the NHL and often leave exactly at the moment when they become real leaders. In the summer of 2026, the best regular sniper Roman Kanzerov, one of the leaders of Dinamo Minsk, Vitaly Pinchuk, Ilya Safonov, Ilya Nabokov and other notable players left the championship. Egor Zamula, Alexander Alekseev, Ivan Fedotov, Egor Afanasyev and other hockey players with NHL experience arrived in the opposite direction. This is a major boost for their new clubs. But mostly we are talking about players who have failed to gain a foothold across the ocean in leading roles.

It has also become more difficult with foreigners. The European market for our clubs has narrowed significantly after 2022, and conditions in the AHL have become more attractive. Now, North Americans don't always need to go to Russia to earn good money.

Limit ceiling

The tight salary cap is one of the KHL's most important reforms in recent years. The point is clear: rich clubs should not be able to collect all the best players just because they can pay more. Since the 2026/27 season, the upper limit has increased from 900 million to 950 million rubles. There is also a "floor" of salaries — the minimum amount that the club is required to spend on the squad.

The ceiling really changed the league. The difference between the leading teams and the rest became smaller, and the managers had to carefully count the money and assemble the squad. But almost immediately, another game began — the search for ways to formally stay within the limit. The KHL used the termination of expensive contracts with the subsequent signing of new agreements for smaller amounts, monetary compensation during exchanges, and other structures permitted by the regulations. The league gradually closes some of these loopholes, but usually after the clubs manage to take advantage of them.

Since the new season, another controversial tool has appeared — advertising contracts. Each club can additionally spend up to 50 million rubles on commercial agreements between players. This money is not counted under the ceiling. According to the official logic, a hockey player receives them not for playing, but for participating in advertising and promoting partners. In fact, the club gets the opportunity to offer the player more competition without increasing the amount that is counted under the ceiling.

One team can offer a hockey player 50 million rubles of a regular salary. The other one is the same 50 million and another 20 million for advertising. The numbers will be the same for the ceiling. Not for the player. After several years of fighting for strict financial restrictions, the KHL has an official way to pay over the limit.

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68 matches for the sake of six eliminated

It's even easier with regular season math. There are 22 teams in the KHL. 16 are entering the Gagarin Cup. After a long season, only six clubs remain behind. This was especially noticeable in the 2025/26 championship. Long before the finish, 15 of the 16 playoff participants were almost decided. The fight for places and the advantage of their own ground continued, but for most teams the main issue had already been resolved. That's why some of the matches in February and March are losing their edge. One club has almost guaranteed itself the playoffs, the other has practically lost its chances, and the calendar continues.

The KHL is trying to make the final place in the table more important. Starting from the 2026/27 season, after the first round of the Gagarin Cup, the teams will be re-allocated based on the results of the regular season. A higher position should give you an advantage further. But the ratio remains the same — 16 out of 22.

While almost three quarters of the league is in the playoffs, it's hard to expect the same struggle for the last spots as in the NHL. At the same time, we are talking about 748 regular season matches. The league needs not only to determine the participants of the Gagarin Cup, but also to make sure that a significant part of these meetings retain their tournament meaning.

Judges under pressure

The KHL's refereeing problem has long been beyond a few mistakes per season. Alexey Anisimov, the league's chief referee, also holds the post of KHL vice president. This is an unusual combination. The head of the judicial corps must first of all defend the interests of arbitrators, their working conditions and the development of the profession. The vice president already represents the interests of the league itself. Combining these positions creates a contradiction in itself.

KHL referees are highly dependent on internal ratings. Errors can also affect the amount of payments, so in controversial situations, judges try to insure video reviews more often. This is understandable for them, but for the game it means additional pauses and less independence on the ice. Generational change is an equally serious issue. A young referee needs to go through the MHL and the VHL, work for several years for relatively little money, and at the same time have no guarantees that he will ever reach the KHL. The queue of those who want to build such a career is clearly not growing from this.

And the profession itself doesn't get any easier. The league regularly changes the interpretation of the rules, and sometimes decisions are adjusted already during the preseason. That's what happened with the new penalty for holding up the puck with your hand. At one tournament, they gave two minutes per episode, but after a few days the interpretation was actually abandoned. In such a situation, the complaints are no longer about individual referees, but about how the KHL trains, evaluates, and monitors referees.

Accreditation of disagreements

The most high-profile KHL conflict in August took place outside the venue. Before the season, the league denied seasonal accreditations to several well-known journalists. The situation with Alexei Shevchenko, who has been working in hockey journalism for more than 30 years and regularly criticizes KHL decisions, caused the greatest resonance. The league stated that he violated the rules of accreditation and had previously received warnings.

This kind of hockey: The KHL has purged its journalists

The league did not grant accreditation for the 2026/27 season to several well-known media representatives at once - SE issued a statement.

The dispute arose over something else. In the first days after the refusal, the KHL did not publicly provide a detailed list of specific episodes that led to the sanction. Against this background, the decision began to be perceived as a possible reaction to the uncomfortable position of the journalist. The tournament organizer has the right to establish rules for the work of the media and punish their violation. But the tougher the sanction, the clearer the grounds should be.

As a result, the KHL determines the rules itself, decides for itself whether they have been violated, and controls the journalist's access to the matches. This is especially unpleasant for the KHL: the league itself talks about the need to expand the audience and increase the media coverage of the championship. And journalists, including those who are critical, bring this audience in many ways.

Error correction time

The KHL is still the main hockey tournament in Russia, with strong clubs, large arenas, and serious infrastructure. But at the same time, the championship has to solve several tasks at once. The best young players are becoming increasingly difficult to retain. The salary ceiling has to be constantly patched up with new restrictions. The regular season loses its main intrigue too soon. Questions have accumulated in the judicial system, and the conflict with journalists has already hit the reputation of the league itself.

None of these plots alone looks critical. But the more of them there are, the more important is the KHL's ability to quickly admit its own mistakes and change the rules when they stop working. The last year shows that this is exactly what the league periodically has difficulties with.