Ins & Outs (Updated)

More expansion news!  When last we checked in on things, Lada Tolyatti had suddenly thrown their hats into the ring for KHL membership next season, and in fact were looking like a decent bet.  Now, not so much.  The sponsorship that the team was hoping for has not come through, and they appear to be VHL-bound again, at least for the near future.  As for the Milan and Zagreb projects, they seem to be still on course, but there's no definitive word yet.  We should have more concrete news soon; last year's announcements about Slovan and Lev happened during the KHL playoffs in March.

Update: Via Argos in the comments, we'll find out about Medveščak Zagreb on March 15th - the Ides of March, for those of you who are into ancient history.

After the jump, for the sake of some historical context, a very quick look at the history of expansion and contraction in the KHL!

HC MVD merged with Dynamo Moscow in 2010, to prevent both clubs going out of business. (photo via idasq.com)

Offseason	Teams In	Teams Out
2009	Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg	Khimik Voskresensk
2010	Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk	HC MVD, Lada Tolyatti
2011	Lev Poprad	None
2012	Lev Prague, Slovan Bratislava, Donbass Donetsk	Lev Poprad

So, the KHL has added at least one team every season, so it's a decent bet that they'll end end up bringing in somebody this summer.  However, it's worth noting that it frequently loses teams as well.  There haven't been any terribly serious rumblings of impending doom from the league so far this season; although all was not well at Avtomobilist earlier on, that situation has now been resolved.  At Amur, too, there was some worry that the powers that be didn't have the club's best interests in mind, but I'd be surprised if anything happened there.  Amur are too popular in their hometown, and too key to the KHL's hopes in the East.  Vityaz Chekhov and Metallurg Novokuznetsk have had their difficulties as well in recent seasons, and Vityaz has been experiencing terrible attendance figures in the last few weeks, but I've yet to hear any talk that their KHL places are at risk.

Hopefully this will be an offseason in which the only additions are to the "Teams In" column!