The Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League is "expanding into China next season with a team in Beijing," according to the AP. KHL Deputy Chair Roman Rotenberg said on Monday that the unnamed team "will start play in September at the 18,000-capacity MasterCard Center in Beijing, the 2008 Olympic basketball venue and home of the Beijing Ducks basketball team." Rotenberg said that the new team will be "financed by Russian and Chinese businesses" and that the project includes an academy staffed by "several children's coaches" sent by the KHL to develop players. There is also "support from the Chinese government, which is seeking to expand hockey in time for the Olympics." The KHL has 28 teams in seven countries across Eastern Europe and Central Asia but "remains highly focused on Russia," which has 22 teams. Other countries "have one team each" (AP, 12/14). VICE SPORTS' Chris Toman wrote this is "all part of a bigger plan to grow hockey in the world's most populous country." Rotenberg said, "The task is to build a hockey vertical: a KHL team, a second team playing in the Chinese league, a team in the youth league and mass involvement so that all who wish can play ice hockey. There should be more ice rinks that are public and open for all. This is a priority task." Some numbers "reveal there's interest." There "were 120 million people in China" who watched the 2014 Sochi Gold Medal game between Canada and Sweden. The following year, the NHL N.Y. Islanders selected Andong Song in the sixth round of the NHL entry draft, "making him the first Chinese-born player to be drafted by an NHL team." China's state TV broadcaster CCTV reported that 2.5 million "people stayed up past midnight to watch Song get taken by the Islanders." Song said, "When I was growing up, we rarely had hockey on TV and the community wasn't big. Now is a different story" (VICE SPORTS, 12/15).
