Quote:
Originally Posted by malkinfan
Essentially this is impossible for the KHL. By board I mean a real board, not a dictatorship, pretend decoration board. In a good board, the owners all have a say and the CEO/President (Medvedev) has much say, but not total say. If a majority of members don't like what is going on they can vote for a new president. This will never happen in reality because Medvedev is a necessity to the KHL, they cannot just remove him. However, this allows Medvedev to dominate the board and make decisions the way he wants to with little opposition or fear of being removed.
Fetisov stepping down from the board chairman position was strange. Fetisov says that he got along well with Medvedev, they just had disagreements on some issues. Read between the lines here, looks like Medvedev won his way too often. In a healthy operating board, this kind of thing would never happen. The point of the board is to keep the CEO/President accountable on behalf of board members.
My point was that this aggressive leadership style by Medvedev certainly has some advantages, it will certainly scare off prospective foreign teams.
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No one is a bigger fan of Fetisov than myself - he has been my idol for many years, and that won't change. However, reality suggests that to have a chance of succeeding, the KHL needed someone with the money and political power of Medvedev to make such an ambitious project succeed. I don't understand how the KHL could exist without that level of backing. The KHL is not yet in a position to create an environment where all team owners are united in a quest for success (e.g., revenue sharing, creating balanced competition, salary caps, etc.), as you find in long-established leagues like the NHL. Until such time, the KHL will continue to need a strong man like Medvedev to enforce balance and promote an expansion of revenue distribution to the extent possible. You can argue that he has failed at it, but it seems to me that that is what is needed.
In the meantime, I hope Fetisov stays in the hockey hierarchy in some fashion. His loss would be a huge blow the psyche of Russian hockey.
