The KHL wants to play exhibition games with the Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning
It looks like the NHL could be headed back to Russia.
According to Andrew Zadarnowski, a writer for the SBNation page Habs Eyes on the Prize, the KHL and NHL are in negotiations to have the Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning come overseas to play some exhibition games.
The KHL is negotiating with the NHL to host the Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning in Russia for a couple of exhibition games against their teams. They are targeting September of 2022, and obviously Ovechkin and Kucherov are the big draws.
— Andrew Zadarnowski (@AZadarski) December 13, 2021As Zadarnowski says, the Capitals and Lightning are obvious candidates to play in Russia because of the star Russian players on each team. Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Dmitry Orlov, Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy are among the top Russian players in the NHL right now.
The Capitals played in Europe in 1981 and 1989. but they haven’t been overseas during the Ovechkin era. The Lightning were one of the four teams to play in Europe during the 2008 NHL Premiere and they played in Sweden for the 2019 NHL Global Series.
The NHL has an extensive series of playing games in Russia. The Super Series between NHL and Soviet Union teams was a mainstay between 1976 and 1991. After nearly two decades away, the NHL played its first game on post-Soviet ice in 2010 when the Carolina Hurricanes got dropped by SKA in Saint Petersburg.