Happiness and hope for Christmas

The KHL would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all of our fans, players, coaches and staff who are celebrating this weekend.

Traditionally, the festive period is a time to look back and reflect on the latest achievements on the ice. It’s time to celebrate our newest champions and remember the feats of the KHL’s top stars at the World Championship. This year, though, is different.

For well-known reasons, we cannot acclaim a new Gagarin Cup winner for 2020 – although we can, and should, give enormous credit to the KRS Vanke Rays, who overcame unexpected exile to win the Women’s Hockey League at the first attempt. There are no new World Championship stories to tell, neither for team Russia nor the many KHLers representing their homelands at the climax of the international season.

Instead, we can celebrate a different kind of triumph. A triumph of spirit, determination and ingenuity. The resilience that makes the KHL an absorbing spectacle on the ice found a new focus as everyone associated with the league responded to 2020’s challenging new realities and got the league up and running as planned on September 2. It hasn’t been easy. We have seen clubs forced to relocate, teams placed in quarantine, and sadly some games have been impossible to stage as planned. But as we look forward to the Christmas and New Year holidays, everyone involved with the KHL, JHL and Women’s Hockey League can take enormous satisfaction from overcoming these obstacles and keeping the action on the ice.

And there has been plenty to get excited about as our teams have competed. The impact of the hard salary cap, implemented in full despite this year’s difficulties, brings us a more competitive championship than ever. More youngsters are getting opportunities to play at the highest level, and are achieving great things both in the KHL and on the international stage, where Russia’s U20s pulled off a sensational win at the Karjala Cup against adult opposition in November. In times of adversity, the hockey family is pulling together. Our clubs have reinvented ways to engage their fans, even when getting large numbers into arenas is problematic. And throughout the KHL’s vast territory, players and clubs have thrown their weight behind all sorts of initiatives to support vulnerable members of their communities and reinforce the key health and safety messages during the pandemic.

All this has involved a huge amount of work on behalf of the KHL and its partners – in sport, in government and in the wider community. Now, as many of our players, coaches and fans look forward to their Christmas celebrations, we are reminded that hope is one of the key messages of the season. And in that spirit, we share our hopes for the coming future: hopes for progress, hopes that our world can overcome this virus, hopes that we will soon be enjoying our hockey together once again, without restrictions.

And, of course, hope that you – and everyone who follows the KHL – enjoys a safe, happy holiday season ... and joins us again soon for more hockey thrills.