Hockey: To Vladivostok and Beyond

[cpzilliacus]

N.Y. Times: To Vladivostok and Beyond

MOSCOW – Admiral, one of two new teams in the Kontinental Hockey League, cobbled together a roster in a matter of weeks this summer, picking up youthful prospects in an expansion draft as well as journeymen from Russia, Germany, Sweden and Canada. The team began practicing at an arena outside Moscow only last month, its foreign players delayed by hitches in obtaining work visas. Its home arena in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific Ocean, 4,000 miles from Moscow (and only 70 from North Korea), remains unfinished, forcing the team to play its first seven games on the road.

"We're starting from scratch,"  said Alexander Mogilny, a former N.H.L. star who was hired as the team's first general manager. "It's not easy."

The K.H.L.'s ambitions never have been. Nor has its turbulent history, which has included the death of a player (the lack of medical equipment at the arena was blamed), two bankruptcies that forced teams out of the league, and a plane crash in 2011 that killed nearly all of the players and coaches of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, one of the league's most popular teams.