Rene Fasel: KHL teams will never appear in Sweden, Finland, or Switzerland

Head of the IIHF Rene Fasel shared his thoughts about the KHL’s plans for European expansion.

«KHL teams will never do not appear in Sweden, Finland, or Switzerland. Local leagues there are strong enough and won’t be willing to share what they have achieved with anyone. Our objective is to reduce the number of clubs and grow up as many young talents as we can.

«In addition to that, the accession to the KHL is financially challenging for the European clubs. If you don’t have powerful sponsors or influential people behind you who are ready to pay your bills at any moment, your team has no chance in this league. How much is the salary cap in the KHL? $23 or $25 million? For Europe, this is an overwhelming amount of money. And what part of your budget you can fill by ticket sales? 5 or 10 percent?»

«Considering all these, should we expect to see Hockey Milano in the KHL?»

«I have always emphasized that I support the expansion of the KHL in those regions, where there are no strong domestic leagues. Italy is a reasonable option, even Austria is not a bad one. There is also Croatia. But then again, everything depends not on money, but rather on the deficit of good players. Who will play in those new clubs?» Fasel said as quoted by Sport-Express.