THE president of the Kontinental Hockey League revealed recently that he was reviewing a batch of applications for new teams to join the competition – including one from an interested party in the UK.

That’s right, a proposal has been made for a UK-based team to enter the primarily-Russian KHL, widely regarded the second-highest level of competition in the professional hockey world.

Although at the time of its inception in 2008 the KHL was for clubs based in the former Soviet Union, it has since expanded to include teams from Croatia and Finland, with only 22 of the 28 current clubs located in Russia. A desire for further expansion has been expressed and, alongside the recent UK proposal, the KHL are reportedly considering interest from Sweden, Estonia, and others.

So, given the KHL’s expansively international ambitions – supported by reports that a team in either Beijing or Seoul will soon be joining – the notion of a participating club based on British soil doesn’t sound so bizarre. Well, slightly less bizarre, at least.

It has since emerged that the UK’s interested party is none other than Britain’s own ice hockey oligarch Neil Black, owner of the Elite League’s Braehead Clan and Nottingham Panthers. Russian sports website R-Sport published a short interview with Black, where he cited the lack of a suitable arena and unnamed logistical issues as the main hurdles to overcome.

Although, admittedly, it’s hard to know exactly what was said, given the infamously potent garbling effect of translating English into Russian and back again, Black seems to suggest that a KHL-appropriate venue could be a available as soon as 2018. That brings us on to the question of Black’s intentions as to the identity of this new KHL club – that is, would it be a new club at all? The Clan’s home venue at Braehead Arena is scheduled for a complete rebuild, as part of massive refurbishments to the adjoining shopping complex.

Talking to BBC Sport Scotland last year, Braehead’s director of hockey operations, Gareth Chalmers, said the rebuild would double capacity – and it should be ready by 2018. Coincidence?

If Black’s idea is to beef-up a newly-rehoused Braehead team and propel them into the KHL, undoubtedly it would be a great loss to the Elite League, especially to the other Scottish sides. But I can’t deny the prospect of KHL-level hockey coming to Glasgow is an exciting one.

But would Braehead really be the most sensible location? Despite boasting a fairly sparse hockey tradition, the obvious guess for the UK’s KHL destination would have to be London – and bear in mind Black has also expressed a concrete interest in bringing Elite League hockey to the capital again soon. London has come to be heavily populated by Russian nationals, many of whom occupy the super-rich category. This could be important not only in guaranteeing interest and attendances, but in securing the big-money backing and sponsorships needed to keep a KHL team afloat.

Money, according to Braehead netminder Chris Holt, is the reason the whole venture is never going to happen. Speaking on the Clan’s Purple Army podcast, Holt, who played three seasons in the KHL, described some of the financial challenges. For a start, the fee for entry into the league alone would be, by Holt’s estimation, something around £100 million. Running costs would be huge, with massive salaries required in order to be competitive and potentially high venue costs – not to mention the travel budget.

The other cost of travel would of course be time, with the players spending half their lives on planes. The KHL’s easternmost team, Admiral Vladivostok, plays in a port city on the Sea of Japan close to North Korea, in a time zone 10 hours ahead of the UK. Is it really conceivable that a British team could be playing regular-season hockey in Vladivostok and vice versa?

Since Zagreb, for example, already plays in the KHL, I guess the notion is conceivable – but that only proves that perhaps it’s just the league that’s bizarre, not Neil Black’s intention to join.