Introduction: the progress of elite ice hockey beyond the NHL.

The result has been a veritable explosion of detailed and compelling accounts of various aspects of the game as a social phenomenon, including anything from the development of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the organization of women's ice hockey to violence on and off the ice, as well as the staging of the sport as a Cold War battleground. This is perhaps especially true about ice hockey outside of North America, as the expansion of the European Union, the increasing internationalization of the NHL and the rise at the turn of the millennium 2000 of the transnational Russian equivalent, the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), have contributed to a profound transformation of the sport both on and off the ice. The National Hockey League (NHL), as one of five major leagues (with baseball as the prime model), is closely linked to the entertainment industry and is based on the principle of profit maximization, which means that the franchise (club) owners strive to achieve the greatest possible financial profitability. At the end of the article, Altukhov, Mason and Osokin compare KHL logics with NHL culture, which leads to a discussion of the future of the KHL. [Extracted from the article]