Zhenskaya Hockey League

The creation of the Zhenskaya Hockey League was announced on 12 September 2014 at a meeting of Alexander Medvedev, president of the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia (FHR), and Vladislav Tretiak, president of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). The parties expressed their readiness to jointly establish the ZhHL and to achieve the dream of taking women's hockey in Russia to a new level of development. However, the FHR established the Zhenskaya Hockey League independently. There was a meeting with representatives of different Russian women's hockey teams on 2 July 2014. On the same day, the Honored Master of Sports, Alexei Yashin, was elected as president of the league while Yevgeny Chizhmin was appointed as the league's executive director.^{[citation needed]}

However, the process of creating the league stalled because of a disagreement of the KHL with the fact that the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia established the league without reaching an agreement with the KHL, and on 22 December 2014, Alexei Yashin said in an interview with Championat.com: "While all this is a little suspended, what will happen next is hard for me to say. The management has made such a decision about changes in the KHL, which is what it is. I have a very good relationship with Alexander Ivanovich Medvedev. I think he did a lot for our hockey. I have not talked with Dmitry Chernyshenko yet. As for the women's league, when we talked, there was a certain situation that the KHL, FHR and Ruslan Gutnov would participate in the creation and development of this project. Now, while this process has slowed down, it's difficult for me to talk about terms."^{[citation needed]}

The KHL, with the FHR, returned to the subject of the ZhHL in 2015. On 23 April 2015, the FHR Executive Committee voted to transfer the rights to host the women's ice hockey Russian Championship to the KHL. On 19 June 2015, the KHL established the Zhenskaya Hockey League, holding a presentation of a new league in the Ministry of Sport of Russia. On 8 September 2015, after the first matches of the championship of the ZhHL, the Board of Directors of the KHL approved the Rules of the League Championship.^{[citation needed]}

Prior to the 2016–17 season, an eighth team, Dinamo Kursk, was supposed to be added to compete in the league. However, on 5 September 2016, despite the league taking all possible measures to ensure they would take part, Dinamo Kursk ultimately withdrew from the competition due to unresolved organizational and logistical issues.^[7] On 25 July 2019, the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays announced it was joining the ZhHL for the 2019–20 season.^[8]

 

 

Agidel

 

Belye Medveditsy

 

Biryusa

 

Dinamo-Neva

 

7.62

 

SKSO

 

Tornado

 

Torpedo

class=notpageimage|

Location of Zhenskaya Hockey League teams in Russia

 

 

Agidel

 

 

Dinamo-Neva

 

MSMO 7.62

 

SKSO

 

Tornado

 

Torpedo

class=notpageimage|

Location of ZhHL teams in Western Russia

In June 2023, the only China-based team in the Zhenskaya Hockey League, Shenzhen KRS, announced they would not participate in the 2023–24 ZhHL season "due to the participation of players of the Chinese national team in the domestic championship of the country."^[9] The withdrawal of Shenzhen KRS reduced the number of participating teams to eight, all of which are located in Russia.

The departure of Shenzhen KRS, which featured sixteen Chinese and four Canadian players during the 2022–23 season, and the transfer of Hungarian-American forward Hayley Williams from Dinamo-Neva to Hokiklub Budapest in the European Women's Hockey League, left Czech defenseman Pavlína Horálková of Biryusa as the only foreign import player active in the 2023–24 ZhHL season. In November 2023, Czech forward Alena Mills signed with Agidel Ufa to bring the number of foreign nationals to two for the remainder of the season.^[10]

Team name	Location	Home venue	Head coach	Captain
Agidel	Ufa	Ice Palace Salavat Yulaev	Valeri Davletshin	Maria Pechnikova
Belye Medveditsy	Chelyabinsk	Yunost Sport Palace	Denis Afinogenov	Yekaterina Lebedeva
Biryusa	Krasnoyarsk	Platinum Arena [ru][11]	Alexander Vedernikov	Pavlina Horalkova
Dinamo-Neva	Saint Petersburg	Jubilee Sports Complex [ru]	Alexander Zybin	Alyona Andryushchenko
MSMO 7.62	Voskresensk	Podmoskovie Ice Palace	Alexander Syrtsov	Vlada Nazarenko
SKSO	Yekaterinburg	Ice Arena A. Kozitsyna	Sergei Chistyakov	Diana Abdulina
Tornado	Dmitrov	Dmitrov Sports Complex [ru]	Sergei Bondarenko	Yekaterina Zakharova
Torpedo	Nizhny Novgorod	KRK Nagorny	Oleg Nemestnikov	Angelina Goncharenko

Sources: ^[12][13][14]

• Official website (in Russian)
• Women's Hockey League on Facebook   (in Russian)
• Women's Hockey League on Twitter   (in Russian)
• Zhenskaya Hockey League at EliteProspects.com
• Women's Hockey League at Eurohockey.com