Kontinental Hockey League

The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) (Russian: Континентальная хоккейная лига, Kontinental'naya khokkeynaya liga) is an international professional ice hockey league in Eurasia founded in 2008. It is commonly considered to be the strongest hockey league in Europe, and the second-best in the world.

The league was formed in 2008, from a predecessor organization, the Russian Superleague (RSL). The KHL began its operations with 24 teams. After minor changes in the composition of the Russian teams and even a reduction to 23 teams for two seasons, the league expanded to 26 teams for the 2012–13 season: Lokomotiv Yaroslavl returned after missing last season due to the air disaster in 2011, Slovan Bratislava from Slovakia and HC Donbass from Donetsk, Ukraine joined the league, while Lev Poprad were replaced by Lev Praha, a team with the same name, but based in Prague, Czech Republic. Thus, for the first time, the league consists of 26 teams, of which 20 are based in Russia and 6 more are located in Belarus, Czech Republic, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Slovakia and Ukraine.

The winner of the 16-team playoff after the end of the regular season is awarded the Gagarin Cup, named after the first man to reach space and orbit the Earth, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The title of Champion of Russia is given to the highest ranked Russian team.

Russians constitute a large majority of the players in the KHL because of its origins as the Soviet and Russian national league. Players not from Russia represent a minority of 33% of the KHL players, and are mostly Eastern European (17.0%), Scandinavian (7.7%), and North American (4.6%). In 2011–12, there were 701 players in the league.

Despite the word "Continental" traditionally being spelled with a C and not a K in the English language, the KHL transliterates the word with a K to distinguish it from numerous leagues that are abbreviated as CHL, such as the Canadian Hockey League and the Central Hockey League, and so that its abbreviation can look similar in both the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets.