Finnish ice hockey team to join Russia's KHL

One of Finland’s biggest ice hockey clubs, Jokerit, announced Friday it will quit the Finnish league to join the Russian-led Continental Hockey League (KHL).

Jokerit said it would join the KHL in the autumn of 2014 and that its Helsinki arena, the Hartwall Areena, had been bought by two Russian investors, the Rotenberg family and Gennady Timchenko.

The KHL is currently made up of 26 teams, including 20 from Russia and one each from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Ukraine.

“With the arrival of a Finnish club in the KHL, we have a real contintental league,” Timchenko told a press conference in Helsinki.

Jokerit’s main shareholder, Finnish businessman Hjallis Harkimo, said the KHL was “the best possible place for Jokerit” and said he hoped the league would “expand to other European countries.”

News of the move took Finns by surprise, in a country where ice hockey is the national sport.

With a salary budget of just three million euros ($3.9 million), Jokerit would find itself second-to-last among KHL clubs.

Financial daily Kauppalehti noted meanwhile that Jokerit and Hartwall Areena had posted “heavy losses”.

Jokerit has won the Finnish championship six times, with players like Jari Kurri and Timo Selanne starting their careers there before making the move to the National Hockey League.

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