KHL set to expand into Vladivostok, not in Gdansk

The KHL is on the brink of announcing the addition of Vladivostok to the burgeoning hockey league, former Russian sports minister and hockey great Slava Fetisov told R-Sport on Thursday.

The Pacific port city lacks a professional team but will acquire one as soon as a hockey arena for up to 7,500 fans is built, KHL president Alexander Medvedev said last month.

"Soon we will delight the residents of the Far East with an announcement about the addition of a team from Vladivostok into the KHL," said Fetisov, the league's former chairman and a senator representing Vladivostok's region of Primorsky Krai in Russia's upper house.

"I hope on this issue we'll find the support of the country's president," added Fetisov, in a nod to President Vladimir Putin. Fetisov stopped short of saying whether Vladivostok would be adopted into the KHL for sure, however.

"It's a good percentage," he said. "I don't want to name a figure, because with these kinds of things it's either 100 percent, as in the club's entry is a fact, or zero." It would give the Far East a second top-flight team, with Amur Khabarovsk, situated 700 kilometers north of Vladivostok, one of the KHL's founding members.

Success in recruiting Vladivostok to the expansion drive comes in the wake of failure to absorb Polish team Gdansk.

Despite boasting excellent facilities, as anticipated by Eurohockey.com,  the team on the Baltic coast has not been able to secure financing for next season. Another mooted addition, former KHL team Lada Tolyatti, has fallen silent on its possible return to the top flight.

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