I ran into a conversation on Twitter yesterday that suggested the exodus of AHL veterans – which has a specific definition – has increased this season. We would need final rosters, and then a host of previous rosters, and then a lot of work would have to go into the status of the players on each team in each season, so don't look for that to get done. If the dataset doesn't exist with a neat little download button next to it, no one bothers.

Download - Tableau - Tweet - ??? - Profit that's the formula for success. You can decide if thinking comes into play there in step four.

However, I am willing to look at one narrow area that I think is at play here. And it's Daniel Sprong's fault, because he is finally leaving the NHL after playing for all 32 teams and being every fanbase's suggestion for an offseason addition. He went to the KHL.

In 2020-2021 (before Covid) the KHL looked like this (all numbers from Elite Prospects):

73 North Americans, 890 Europeans, some of whom were not imports to the league as that number includes all Russians and others for whom there were teams where they qualified as non-import players. There were a sprinkling of others that made the imports total 302. Canada was the single biggest supplier of import players with 54.

Covid barely affected these numbers in the following year since the KHL merrily operated as if there was no risk. In 2021-2022, the numbers were 290 imports with the identical number of Canadians at 54 and 814 Europeans.

In 2022-2023 things changed. The team in Finland and the one in Latvia had walked out of the league during Covid, and the players from many European countries walked away from their teams in February of 2022. When the new season began only one Finn was on a KHL team. The North Americans were at 77 players, with 60 Canadians, but the total imports was down to 185. Some number of the North American players had dual-citizenship and established lives and families in the various countries that still made up the KHL.

In 2023-2024 there were 193 imports, and 56 Canadians out of 79 total from North America.

In 2024-2025 there were 68 Canadians, 104 North Americans out of 222 imports. No Finns, only four Swedes, three Czechs, so Swiss, no Germans. But 36 Americans, the biggest that number has been in this period and likely ever in the history of the league.

So what actually happened since just before Covid as the KHL shed teams and finally consolidated as a much lower quality league is that the Canadians and Americans never left, and just lately they've been joining up in bigger numbers.

The biggest money European league is likely the Swiss league, but import quotas limit the opportunities there. If it is true that the older experienced AHL players are leaving in bigger numbers as teams add NCAA or CHL prospects to fill the roles on the team their drafted prospects don't have covered, then the willingness of North Americans to play in the KHL is part of the picture. Whether that's a push or a pull effect between the AHL and the KHL or most likely some of each is not something numbers can answer.

In other news, a fellow named Ethan Czata signed a contract with Tampa, the only signing since Kaapo Kakko yesterday. There were no trades.

Rogers looks for cost savings in sports portfolio after becoming MLSE majority owner | Globalnews.ca
Rogers hopes to find “revenue and cost synergies” in its expanded portfolio of sports assets after becoming the majority owner of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.
Global NewsThe Canadian Press
“I expect that as we roll in the Toronto Blue Jays’ Rogers Centre with Scotiabank Arena and the other venues within MLSE and the sports teams within MLSE, we will find revenue and cost synergies,” chief financial officer Glenn Brandt replied.

This is in line with some of the things Keith Pelley said at his first presser. There is a great deal of stuff – to use the technical term – that a big organization buys to keep itself going. Doing that all in one central office will save money, but the work is the work is the work, and the end result is going to be a not very different number of employees.

I expect MLSE to try to find ways to combine other less obvious tasks each team engages in to make all of this cost less.

Meanwhile those persistent rumours that the NHL is doomed, Gary has destroyed it, no one watches and it's all going down the tubes!!! are not true.

Media revenue rose 10 per cent, boosted by strong NHL playoff audiences on Sportsnet and the launch of the Warner Bros. Discovery suite of television channels. Cable revenue was up one per cent.

Now, set that alongside that eye-popping increase in streaming costs for SN+ and you have a company that isn't worried about piracy taking their customer base at all. And one of the many things we don't know about this business is how many people actually do just buy the streaming service either through Prime or directly. It's free for TV subscribers, so that limits the customers to the subset of sports fans without sports TV channels through cable or satellite. I do know this: Rogers wants you to get cable, they'd rather not sell you that streaming service at all.

From The Branches