KHL Team In Vladivostok Taps Asian Market For Players To Give League An Asian Feel

The Kontinental Hockey League’s new expansion team in Vladivostok "is keen to sign promising players from Japan and South Korea to give the world’s second-biggest hockey league a distinctly Asian feel," according to R-SPORT. Vladivostok, a port city 6,400km and eight time zones east of Moscow, "will host one of two new teams in the KHL" for '13-14, the other being Croatia’s Medvescak Zagreb. The as-yet-unnamed Vladivostok team drafted Japan’s Shoma Izumi and South Korea’s Chong Hyun Lee in Sunday’s KHL entry draft. The team's Chief Scout Maxim Katkov said, "We consider the Asian market to have real potential and we will definitely attract players from countries like Japan and South Korea" (R-SPORT, 5/27).