Hockey Night in the Eastern Bloc

Let's face it, this isn't looking good for an NHL season this year. Sports programs are already having trouble filling the 95% of airtime they usually dedicate to hockey. I notice that TSN has even shown some highlights of Russia's Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). That's nice, they have plenty of talented players. But we don't know anything about the teams and don't know who we want to see winning. So I did a little Wikipedia research and came up with some reasons:

Western Conference

Team Name	In English that would be...	People you might recognize	Reason to cheer for them
Slovan Bratislava (Bratislava, Slovakia)	Bratislava Blue Eagles	Miroslav Satan	Czechs got most of the best players in the divorce
Vityaz Chekhov	Chekhov Knights	Danny Markov, GM Alexi Zhamnov	Think of the jokes cheering for Chekhov
HC Donbass (Donetsk, Ukraine)	Donetsk Donbass (Donbass is the area they play in)	Alexi Ponikarovsky	Lots of Canadians have Ukrainian blood, here's your team
Dynamo Moscow	Moscow Dynamo	Nicklas Bäckström, Alexander Ovechkin	They're the Mets to the Red Army's Yankees
Lev Praha (Prague, Czech Republic)	Prague Lions	Marcel Hossa, Alexandre Picard	Czech Republic: home of Pilsner
Dinamo Riga (Riga, Latvia)	Riga Dynamo	Rob Schremp, Mikael Tellqvist	As you may know from international tournaments, Latvia has the loudest fans.
SKA St. Petersburg	St. Petersburg Soldiers	Sergei Bobrovsky, Ilya Kovalchuk, Viktor Tikhonov (grandson of the famous coach)	If you like the St. Louis Blues or Utah Jazz, why not cheer for the Ska
Severstal Cherepovets	Northern Steel presents Cherepovets Steelers		Hamilton, be glad that one steel city got a big-league team.
Dinamo Minsk (Minsk, Belarus)	Minsk Dynamo		Logo has a buffalo that looks like the old Sabres logo
CSKA Moscow	Central Red Army	Ilya Bryzgalov, Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Radulov, Anton Volchenkov, GM Sergei Fedorov	If you're a fan of the Yankees, Heat, or Manchester United, then this is your team.
Spartak Moscow	Moscow Spartacus	Oleg Petrov	Think of all the fun yelling, “I am Spartacus!”
Atlant Moscow Oblast	Moscow Atlas	Alexei Kovalev, Nikolay Zherdev	Argos, Titans fans, you Greek mythology teams have to stick together
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod	Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo	Robert Nillson (son of Kent)	Wasn't the Torpedo supposed to be a strategy that would beat the neutral-zone trap?
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl	Yaroslavl Locomotive	Niklas Hagman, Staffan Kronwall, Curtis Sanford, Viktor Kozlov	Seriously, it's easy to cheer for this team after last year's plane crash

Eastern Conference

Team Name	In English that would be...	People you might recognize	Reason to cheer for them
Traktor Chelyabinsk	Chelyabinsk Tractor (but have a polar bear on the logo)	Andrei Kostitsyn	That's some hard core agricultural dedication: even teams on our prairies aren't named after farming equipment
Ak Bars Kazan	Kazan Snow Leopards		Mac fans, this is your team!
HC Yugra	Don't have a nickname, but their mascot is a mammoth		The mascot is because mammoths are often found nearby; sort of a counterpoint to the Nashville Predators
Metallurg Magnitogorsk	Magnitogorsk Metallurgists (or “Steelers,” if you prefer)	Evgeni Malkin, Oleg Tverdovsky, Coach Paul Maurice	“Magnitogorsk” just sounds cool
Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk	Nizhnekamsk Petrochemists		If you think about it, their name is sort of like “Oilers”
Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg	Yekaterinburg Motorists		“Motorists” may not seem like an intimidating name, but keep in mind that we're talking about people driving Ladas through Russian winters.
Barys Astana (Astana, Kazakhstan)	Astana Leopards	Dustin Boyd, Nigel Dawes	If you saw Borat, you probably owe them one. Also, likely the only hockey team on earth with Arabic script on their uniform.
Amur Khabarovsk	Khabarovsk Amur (Amur is a local river)		In Eastern Russia, near the Pacific. So if you're a fan of one of the NHL's Pacific teams, this may be as close as you get.
Metallurg Novokuznetsk	Novokuznetsk Metallurgists	Chris Simon, Brent Sopel	“Metallurgists” is apparently Russia's “Roughriders”
Sibir Novosibirsk	Novosibirsk Siberians		In high school, we had an exchange program with Novosibirsk
Avangard Omsk	Omsk Vanguard	Alexander Frolov	“Vanguard,” they sound like a band of superheroes
Salavat Yulaev Ufa	Ufa Salavat Yulaev (Salavat Yulaev was a local hero, apparently)	Oleg Saprykin	Seems weird having a whole team of UFA's