Foreign Players and the KHL

Now-former Metallurg Magnitogorsk forward Wojtek Wolski.  (Image Source)

It was a move that very few, if anyone, saw coming; ten days ago Metallurg Magnitogorsk released Canadian forward Wojtek Wolski from his contract, making him a free agent.  Wolski, a fan favourite in Magnitogorsk, was at that time the team’s second-leading point-scorer, with a line of 6-9-15 in 18 games, so his release came as a major shock.  What happened?  Well, the answer arrived later that same day, when Metallurg signed Czech forward Michal Bulíř from Bílí Tygři Liberec of the Czech Extraliga.  Wolski’s Metallurg tenure had, it became clear, fallen victim to the KHL’s rules on foreign players — or “legionnaires” (легионеры) as they are often referred to in Russian.  But what are those rules, exactly, and how did they come to cost Wolski his job?  Read on, for an explanation!

The exact number of foreign players that KHL teams are allowed to sign has long been something of a bone of contention between the KHL itself and the Russian Hockey Federation.  To make a long story short: The KHL likes foreign players, and the FHR does not, for easily-understandable reasons in both cases.  Recent Russian legislation gives the nation’s various sports federations, via the Ministry of Sport, the power to set foreign-athlete limits for the national leagues of their various sports, although they must do so in consultation with the leagues themselves.  In the wake of that legislation, the KHL and FHR seem to have come to something of a compromise on the issue, which we’ll discuss here shortly.  It may be a fragile sort of compromise, however; FHR President Vladislav Tretyak recently said that had Russia not won gold in men’s hockey at the 2018 Olympics, the Federation would have reduced the allowed number of foreign players in the KHL.

There is also some mild uncertainty right now over the status of Belarusan players playing for Russian teams.  At the beginning of the current season, there was quite a lot of talk about the possibility that they would no longer count as foreigners when playing in Russia, and the Russian Ministry of Sport has apparently drafted an amendment to the regulations to that effect.  Such a change would bring professional sports into line with employment regulations in other fields in Russia, and for obvious reasons has the enthusiastic backing of the Belarusan Hockey Federation (and the KHL, as well).  However, I am not sure if that new rule has become official just yet; as far as I know, Belarusan players remain officially “foreigners” when playing for Russian teams, although I am certainly willing to be corrected on that if someone knows differently.

Dinamo Minsk (in white) versus Kunlun Red Star Beijing. (Image Source)

So where do we stand at the moment, in terms of the KHL’s foreign player rules?  Well, they differ considerably depending on the whether a team is Russian-based or foreign, so some defining of terms is in order before we get started.  To begin with, a “foreign player” in this context is simply one who is not eligible, due to nationality, to play for the Russian national team (or the national team of the country where his club is based).  And one other very key thing to keep in mind is the difference between the Team Roster and the Game Lineup, as follows:

• Team Roster: Up to 25 players, age 17 or over, signed to KHL contracts (one-way or two-way) by the team.  This is the group from which the Game Lineup is selected.
• Game Lineup: Up to 20 players, including two goalies, selected for each game from the Team Roster, plus up to two others from the team’s junior squad (see below for more explanation of that last point).

With those definitions in place, here’s how the foreign player rules work for this season.  This info is from the KHL’s Sports Regulations for 2017-2021 (link is a PDF, in Russian), with sections 33 and 39 dealing with the Team Roster rules, and section 41 covering the Game Lineup.

Russian Teams:

In terms of the Team Roster, the only nationality restriction for Russian teams is that they may include only one foreign goalie.  Instead, the restrictions are applied to the Game Lineup, which can include only five foreign players.  That means, in effect, that Russian teams must have at least 15 Russians on the Team Roster (and thus a maximum of ten foreigners) in order to be able to dress 20 players for each game.  Furthermore, the “five per game” rule makes it difficult to attract more than five foreigners to sign with a club, as having more means that some of them will be healthy scratches each game simply because of the rules.

The Game Lineup of 20 players can be supplemented by addition of two skaters from the club’s junior team, one of them up to 19 years old, and the other up to twenty.  For Russian KHL teams, these two players must both be Russian.   It is an interesting rule (I like it, although some don’t), giving young players a chance for a taste of what the big league is like, while not requiring them to try to cope with a regular shift.

Incidentally, both young players must also be skaters, and that is a relatively recent change to the rules.  Up until a couple of seasons ago, teams could include a junior goalie in the Game Lineup, but this left a loophole.  Teams would use one of their designated junior spots for the back-up goalie, essentially giving themselves an extra lineup place for an experienced skater.  It worked wonderfully, until the poor young backup goalie actually had to go out and play against KHL shooters (you can ask, to name just one, former Avangard junior goalie Denis Kostin about how that worked out).  Anyway, the loophole has now been closed, and junior goalies are no longer being thrown to the wolves via this rule.

Non-Russian Teams:

For the KHL’s six non-Russian teams, the issue of foreign players is dealt with via the Team Roster.  Among those 25 signed players, each team must have no fewer than ten who are either from the team’s own country or from Russia.  Why are Russian players included as “local” for the non-Russian teams?  Well, I suspect that that is part of the  compromise between the KHL and the Russian Hockey Federation.  The KHL increases the opportunities for Russian players to sign with foreign teams, and in return the FHR does not crack down too severely on the number of foreigners overall.   It’s not a bad compromise, actually, and it helps teams — Kunlun Red Star Beijing, in particular — based in countries that do not yet have a deep pool of KHL-calibre hockey talent.  In any case, there are no restrictions based on position, so a team may have two or more foreign goalies.

There are also no nationality restrictions on the Game Lineup for non-Russian teams.  However, given that at least ten of the 25 Team Roster players will be “local” or Russian, simple arithmetic dictates that least five of those will be in each Game Lineup.  Foreign teams are also allowed to add two junior skaters, with the same age limits as above, and there are no restrictions on those players’ nationalities.

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So, back to Wolski.  At Metallurg, he was playing for a Russian-based team that already had four other foreign players (all of them, like Wolski, are forwards): Iiro Pakarinen (Finland), Matt Ellison (Canada), Dennis Rasmussen (Sweden), and Nick Shore (USA).  While they could have signed Bulíř and kept six foreigners on the Team Roster, the Metallurg coaches clearly felt that they had to let somebody go, to avoid sitting one of their foreign forwards every game.

Michal Bulíř. (Image Source)

Why was Wolski the odd man out?  The answer possibly lies with Metallurg’s new Czech head coach, Josef Jandač.   He is clearly a fan of Bulíř’s play; Jandač gave the now-27-year-old forward his Czech national team debut in 2016-17.  And Rasmussen, Pakarinen, and shore all arrived at Metallurg recently, after Jandač was hired.  So it appears that the choice came down to the two foreign players left from the previous regime, namely Wolski and Ellison, and there you could almost flip a coin; both are capable first-line forwards.  That is one theory, in any case — it is entirely possible that budgetary concerns also played a role.  It remains a somewhat puzzling move; while Bulíř has been prodigious in the Extraliga in 2018-19 (11 gp, 13-3-16), his thirteen goals already match his previous career high in a full season.  We will see how much he can bring to the KHL, but he has at least had a promising start, with a goal already in three games played for Metallurg.

And, happily enough, Wolski was not out of work for long.  He has now signed on with Kunlun Red Star Beijing, for whom he previously played for the first half of 2017-18.  The Chinese club is thus the main beneficiary of the situation; they are in the thick of the playoff hunt in the KHL’s East Conference, and the addition of a scorer like Wolski can only help them.

Thank you for reading, and if you have further questions on the KHL’s foreign player rules, leave ’em in the comments!