Official RIHF statement

The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) has issued a press release concerning the creation of a working group to revive the draft procedure - a system for distributing rights to talented junior players between the league's clubs.

Previous experience with the KHL Junior Draft/Fair shows that this procedure copies the North American draft, which has existed for over 60 years in the sporting system of the USA and Canada. Ice hockey schools in these countries are private enterprises whose income is based on parents paying for their children's education. The vast majority of Russian schools operate thanks to regional and municipal budgets alongside sponsors. The Russian economy for training a professional ice hockey player is fundamentally different from the North American version, and therefore the draft system for distributing young players does not work in the conditions of domestic ice hockey, since bringing a young athlete to a professional contract is carried out at the expense of the school or ice hockey club.

The selection of a talented player by an ice hockey club against his will may contribute to his departure to foreign leagues, which runs counter to the position of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin on counteracting the outflow of young players.

As a consequence, the Russian Ice Hockey Federation believes that the draft procedure proposed by the KHL - a system for distributing rights to talented juniors between the league's clubs - destroys the established system of domestic ice hockey.