Down on the Farm: The VHL and the KHL

Sometimes the little guy wins! Yermak Angarsk’s Matvei Tymchenko scores against his team’s KHL affiliate, Admiral Vladivostok, during a summer-2019 pre-season exhibition game. Yermak won it, too, by a 2-1 score. (Image Source)

We talk a lot about the KHL here, and a certain amount about the VHL; now it is time to talk about them both together! The VHL (the “Vysshaya Khokkeinaya Liga” or “Higher Hockey League”) is the second tier of Russian men’s professional hockey, formerly the second division of the Soviet and Russian championship system back when promotion and relegation took place. The league took its current form (more or less) in 2010, and this summer expanded to a record 34 teams, with clubs in Russia (27), Kazakhstan (3), China (3), and Uzbekistan (1); those teams compete for the Silk Road Cup (the regular-season championship) and the Petrov Cup (the playoff title). The VHL is administered by the Russian Hockey Federation, but serves in large part as the primary farm-team league for the KHL; it is the Russian equivalent of the North American AHL, in other words. Read on, for some discussion of the VHL’s relationship with the KHL, and how it all works.

So, the VHL is the KHL’s top farm-team circuit, but it has 34 teams — ten more than the KHL. And in fact, three KHL clubs do not have a relationship with a VHL team right now (those are Jokerit Helsinki, Dinamo Minsk, and Dinamo Riga), so obviously not every VHL team can be a farm team. In fact, there are three different “levels” of relationship possible between a VHL club and the KHL, and those, and their differences, are laid out below. What follows here is derived largely from Sections 33, 34, and 39 of the VHL Regulations, with a little bit of help from Section 33 of the KHL Regulations (both those links are PDFs, in Russian).

***

Humo Tashkent players celebrate a goal. (Image Source)

First up are those VHL teams that are independent and unaffiliated with any KHL club. These teams have a maximum roster of 30 players, of which no more than 15 can be 25 years old or older. Of those 15, no more than five can be 29 years of age or older (those age rules are recent, and meant to give the league a bigger developmental role). VHL teams are allowed up to four foreign players on the roster, although for Russian teams, none of those four can be a goalie (non-Russian VHL teams are allowed one foreign goalie each). However, as in the KHL, Russian players do not count as foreign even when playing for non-Russian teams.

By my count, 13 of the VHL’s 34 teams have no connection to a KHL club this season, and they are:

• Cheng Tou Jilin City
• Dizel Penza
• Humo Tashkent
• Lada Togliatti
• Neftyanik Almetyevsk
• ORG Beijing
• HK Rostov
• Rubin Tyumen
• HK Ryazan
• Saryarka Karaganda
• Torpedo Ust-Kamenogorsk
• Ugra Khanty-Mansiysk
• Yuzhny Ural Orsk

***

Next up is the group of VHL teams that are independent but have an affiliation agreement (“agreement on sports cooperation,” to give it the official name) with a KHL club. No KHL club can have such an agreement with more than one VHL team, and vice versa; no VHL club can affiliate with more than one KHL team. These affiliation agreements tend to be for one or two years, so they change fairly frequently (the KHL’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, for example, was affiliated with Lada Togliatti last season, but switched to Buran Voronezh this summer).

Affiliated VHL clubs have the same basic 30-player roster as unaffiliated teams, with the same age and nationality restrictions. However, affiliated clubs can also add up to ten players from the KHL club with whom they have the agreement, giving them a total maximum roster of 40 players. Russian KHL teams cannot send foreign players to the VHL as part of that ten-player group, although non-Russian KHL teams can.

Action last season between Metallurg Novokuznetsk (in red and black) and HK Tambov. (Image Source)

Note that while there are no age restrictions on the (up to) ten players sent down from the big league, those age rules laid out above apply not only to VHL rosters but to the game lineups as well. So, for any game, a VHL club, no matter its affiliation status, may dress not more than 15 players of age 25 and up, including not more than four of age 29 and up.

By my count (more later on my confidence in that count), there currently ten VHL clubs with a KHL-affiliation agreement (the affiliated KHL team is in brackets):

• Buran Voronezh (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl)
• CSK VVS Samara (Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk)
• Dynamo St. Petersburg (Vityaz Moscow Oblast)
• Izhstal Izhevsk (Avangard Omsk)
• Metallurg Novokuznetsk (Sibir Novosibirsk Oblast)
• Molot-Prikamye Perm (Severstal Cherepovets)
• Sokol Krasnoyarsk (Amur Khabarovsk)
• HK Tambov (HK Sochi)
• Yermak Angarsk (Admiral Vladivostok)
• Zauralye Kurgan (Metallurg Magnitogorsk)

***

The third group of VHL clubs is comprised of those that have, in the official words of the regulations, “a common organizational or financial structure with a KHL club.” — i.e., those VHL teams that are actually owned by, and part of, a KHL club. Their situation is quite similar to that of clubs with affiliation agreements, in that they have a maximum roster size of 40. However, instead of that being a main roster of up to 30 plus up to ten from the KHL team, these VHL clubs’ may get their entire roster from the KHL parent club. Essentially, the “sent-down” list can have up to 40 players on it, with the rest of the team (if any) made of players under contract to the VHL side alone.

As with the affiliated VHL teams, no age restrictions apply to the “sent-down” players; however, once again, those age rules DO apply to the game lineups. And Russian teams again cannot send down foreign players, so any foreigner playing for a KHL-owned VHL team must be under contract only to the VHL team.

I have 11 VHL teams currently part of a KHL club:

• Bars Kazan (Ak Bars Kazan)
• Chelmet Chelyabinsk (Traktor Chelyabinsk)
• Dynamo Tver (Dynamo Moscow)
• Gornyak Uchaly (Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg)
• Khimik Voskresensk (Spartak Moscow)
• KRS-BSU Beijing (Kunlun Red Star Beijing)
• Nomad Nur-Sultan (Barys Nur-Sultan)
• SKA-Neva St. Petersburg (SKA St. Petersburg)
• Toros Neftekamsk (Salavat Yulaev Ufa)
• Torpedo-Gorky Nizhny Novgorod (Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod Oblast)
• Zvezda Moscow (CSKA Moscow)

SKA-Neva St. Petersburg, top farm-team of the SKA St. Petersburg club, prepare for a 2018-19 game. (Image Source)

***

To recap, and boil it all down, then. The three types of VHL-KHL team relationships, and the basic roster rules, are as follows:

• Group 1 (Completely independent and unaffiliated VHL teams): Up to 30 players on the roster, all under contract to the VHL club.
• Group 2 (KHL-Affiliated VHL teams): Up to 30 VHL-contract players, plus up to ten sent down from the KHL club.
• Group 3 (VHL teams that are part of a KHL club): Up to 40 players, with any combination of VHL contracts and KHL contracts.

Now, up above I laid out lists of teams in each of those three groups this season. I am quite confident that I have gotten the team match-ups right, that is that the right VHL team is paired with (or not paired with) the right KHL team. However, for Groups 2 and 3 it can be a little difficult to tell sometimes whether the VHL team is affiliated with or part of the KHL club — i.e. to tell which of those two groups it belongs in. I’m fairly sure about most of them, but I do have lingering doubts, particularly, about Sokol Krasnoyarsk, Zauralye Kurgan, and Toros Neftkamsk, and less so about a couple of others. I’ll continue to poke away at the problem, so those two lists may change. And certainly if you know I’ve gotten something wrong (or right!) please do say so in the comments.

One last note about VHL rosters and lineups! As you may gather from the fairly strict age restrictions that the league has, one of the VHL’s main purposes is to serve as a stepping stone for young players between junior hockey and the KHL. So it should not surprise you too much to find out that, like the KHL, the VHL allows its teams extra lineup spots for junior players. In fact, the VHL’s rule is identical to the KHL’s rule, the one that we talked about the other day, including the little codicil concerning what happens when a player is called up to the U20 national team. Check out the linked article for full details; as I said, it applies in precisely the same way in both leagues.

***

Thank you for reading! In a future post, we’ll explore how the farm-team systems work for those three KHL teams who are not connected with a VHL club (the Dinamos of Minsk and Riga, plus Jokerit Helsinki), and we’ll talk more about the mechanism of moving players back and forth between the KHL and the minor leagues too. However, next up here is the fourth in our series of Women’s Hockey League previews; tomorrow we look at SKIF Nizhny Novgorod.