The KHL is a strange place by North American standards, and KHL president Alex Medvedev is by far its strangest character. In post-Soviet Russia, there's apparently no conflict of interest for the de-facto commissioner to also be the general manager (technically chairman of the board of directors) of one of its highest-profile and highest-spending teams, SKA St. Petersburg, all while serving on the board of directors of the oil and natural gas giant Gazprom and running the KHL's biggest sponsor, GazpromExport, which is the largest exporter of natural gas in the world.

He's almost a Bond supervillian, a Gary Bettman/Rene Fasel-type who actually enjoys giving interviews (if Gary Bettman was both the NHL's commissioner and one of J.P. Morgan Chase's highest-ranking executives, that translates to the amount of power Medvedev wields) and speaking bombastically, making huge promises about the KHL's future as a European hockey superpower and an equal of the NHL, and the fact that the Russian sports media tends to write novellas as opposed to stories aids his cause.

You're going to have to take this for what it's worth--as statement by a self-serving Medvedev--but Medvedev has told Sport-Express's Nikita Lisoviya (while opening a tennis academy in St. Petersburg and saying that he'll play doubles with Elena Dementieva) that he's: