Fabulous playoffs: the departure of the St. Petersburg club and other KHL events

On April 9, the seventh match of the series between Ufa's Salavat Yulaev and Novosibirsk's Sibir ended the first round of the KHL playoffs. The Bashkir club won and went on. The early stage of the Gagarin Cup was marked by tense series in the Eastern Conference, as well as the first one-time departure of St. Petersburg SKA and Moscow CSKA, as well as the current Gagarin Cup winner Magnitogorsk Metallurg.

SKA departure

It's been 15 years since both army clubs were eliminated in the first round at the same time. In 2010, SKA was already a club with one of the biggest budgets in the league, so its departure from Dinamo Riga was considered a sensation. And CSKA did not yet have a major owner, the red and blue had a very limited budget, so few people were surprised by their failure in the series with the future finalist of that playoff HC MVD. But since then, CSKA and SKA have become the two richest clubs in the league. And for a long time they were the strongest teams of the Western Conference in the Gagarin Cup, every time they played against each other in the semifinals (conference finals) and in a face-to-face dispute they revealed who would play in the finals against the best club in the East.

Last year, they could have played in the Gagarin Cup finals, as before last season the KHL introduced a cross-playoff, in which teams from different conferences played against each other starting from the second round. Before that, East and West did not intersect before the final. But in the new format, SKA and CSKA performed worse than usual. The Moscow Army team was eliminated in the first round by the future finalist Yaroslavl Lokomotiv (1-4) in the series, and the St. Petersburg Army team finished the season in the second round, losing 1-4 to Yekaterinburg Avtomobilist.

This led to major reforms in both teams. Thus, SKA head coach Roman Rotenberg has significantly updated the squad. Evgeny Kuznetsov and Nikita Zaitsev, who returned from the NHL, joined the team, as well as Mikhail Grigorenko, Sergey Plotnikov and Sergey Andronov, who played a significant role in CSKA's long-term victories.

But since the beginning of the season, SKA's game and results have been extremely unstable. The team has experienced several serious downturns. This was partly due to staff turnover during the season. First, she touched goalkeeper Nikita Serebryakov, who began to lose his place in the main squad during the offseason and was traded to Avangard in the fall, where he is now successfully performing. The St. Petersburg club made a bet on goalkeeper Egor Zavragin, who was acquired from Sochi before the season.

Sometimes he was replaced by Pavel Moisevich and Artemy Pleshkov. Sometimes they played well, but often they lacked experience, which led to rotation in goal and instability. The same situation affected the defense, especially when the leader of the army, Alexander Nikishin, dropped out due to injuries. To strengthen this line, the club made two exchanges in December — instead of Stepan Falkovsky, he received Dmitry Yudin from Ak Bars Kazan, and for Ilya Karpukhin from Traktor Chelyabinsk, he gave one of his leaders in recent years, striker Vasily Glotov.

But all the same, the defensive game was never fully adjusted. This was partly due to the fact that the coaching staff did not have a specialized specialist in defenders — Sergey Zubov, who had previously worked with them, took over Sochi in the offseason, and Konstantin Shafranov, a specialist in working with the special teams of the majority, was delegated to an unusual job.

Separately, it is worth noting the incident with the October signing of NHL star defenseman Tony Deangelo, who, after a good start, abruptly lost, and in January, during one of the matches, he came into conflict with Rotenberg's assistant Evgeny Koreshkov and soon left the club. Officially, SKA explained this for family reasons. In addition, Evgeny Kuznetsov was out for a long time twice due to injuries.

The main positive moment for St. Petersburg this season was the progress of the young striker Ivan Demidov. But he also dropped out of the squad in February after a series of unsuccessful matches. As a result, SKA finished in seventh place in the regular season, showing its worst result in KHL history. And he got to Dynamo Moscow, which became the second in the West. After two defeats at the start of the series, Rotenberg again began to trust Demidov more. And Nikishin returned to the third game after injury, whose shots from the blue line immediately increased the team's performance.

And during the fourth game after Rotenberg replaced Zavragin in goal with Pleshkov, who later repeatedly saved his team. All this gave SKA hope of winning the series, but in the end, the overall organization of the Dynamo game, its successful majority led by Nikita Gusev, as well as the ability to impose a fight and score decisive goals from North American players Jordan Weale, Cedric Paquette and Max Comtois helped the blue and white to win the series (4:2). In addition, compared to the last playoffs, they solved the goaltending problem - Maxim Motorygin in the first five matches and Vladislav Podyapolsky in the sixth performed almost flawlessly.

Roman Rotenberg's contract with the club is valid until 2028. But even at the end of the regular season, Sport-Express wrote that relegation in the first round could cost him his position. The club has not yet commented on the situation.

"It turned out to be a very vivid fighting series," Vladimir Krikunov, the former Dynamo head coach, shared his opinion with Izvestia. — There were no big gaps in the level of the teams in all six matches, the whole fight went to the end, it was no coincidence that three matches ended in overtime. Dynamo were a little better at implementing the moments, made fewer mistakes and deservedly won. They have a more experienced and well-played squad, which played a role. The legionnaires proved themselves well. And there are none in SKA, but there are a lot of interesting young guys — take the same Demidov. Both teams were worthy of going further, the series was very dramatic, so congratulations to Dynamo, but SKA should not despair either — the team's prospects are good next season. And Roman Rotenberg is doing a good job. We must not forget that under him, as a manager, two Gagarin Cups were won, and the first relegation in the first round was the first in 15 years.

The failure of CSKA and the triumph of Minsk

From 2016 to 2023, inclusive, CSKA did not reach the Gagarin Cup final only twice, and once it happened for reasons beyond its control — the 2020 playoffs were not played due to covid. Otherwise, the Moscow Army team had six finals in eight seasons — three won and three lost.

In 2024, for the first time in 11 years, CSKA did not even pass the first round. This led to the departure of Sergey Fedorov from the post of head coach. The NHL and national team star forward spent three seasons at the head of the team, winning the Gagarin Cup twice with it. In addition, the management began to restructure the squad, having parted with a significant part of the players who were involved in three victories in the Gagarin Cup.

Grigorenko, Plotnikov, Anton Slepyshev and Andrey Svetlakov left in the offseason. Goalkeeper Ivan Fedotov left for the NHL. Konstantin Okulov left CSKA during the season. Of the people with multiple winning experiences, only Nikita Nesterov, Maxim Mamin, Pavel Karnaukhov, Vladislav Kamenev remained in the squad, as well as Maxim Sorkin, Prokhor Poltapov and Vitaly Abramov, who were young during the triumph.

The last three have become a key part of this season, showing very high performance and a vibrant game. But in the middle of winter, Abramov was out for the rest of the season due to injury. The army began to strengthen mainly due to the signing of young Russian players who played in North America, and mostly not in the NHL, but in the AHL. This is how goalkeeper Ivan Prosvetov, defenders Nikita Okhotyuk and Dmitry Samorukov, forwards Egor Afanasyev, Ruslan Iskhakov and Stanley Cup finalist Denis Guryanov, who has not played very successfully in the NHL in recent years, came to Dallas. In addition, Ivan Drozdov, one of the leaders of Salavat Yulaev last season, came.

All these newcomers played great matches, but they played very unstably. Ilya Vorobyov, known for his successful work at Metallurg (three Gagarin Cup finals, one of which was victorious), was appointed head coach instead of Fedorov. It was clear that he had a difficult task ahead of him to rebuild a team that had almost lost its championship roster.

She finished fifth in the West in the regular season and got to Dinamo Minsk. First, there were two defeats in the capital of Belarus, then CSKA won twice in Moscow, but the fifth match in Minsk turned into a disaster — a 0 defeat.:7. In the sixth game in Moscow, Dynamo finished off the Army 5:2 and won the playoff series for the first time in its history - Minsk had never reached the second round before.

Ilya Vorobyov has two years left on his contract, but even at its conclusion, the possibility of termination was stipulated in case of non-entry into the finals. It is not yet clear what the club will do.

It is interesting that the man who once created its champion backbone sent CSKA on vacation. Dmitry Kvartalnov, the head coach of the Belarusian team, worked with the Army in 2014-2017, reached the finals of the Gagarin Cup in 2016 and won three regular championships. At Dinamo Minsk, he managed to create history within the KHL.

"Of course, we feel that we have made history, and that's a fact," said Dynamo Minsk striker Egor Borikov in a conversation with Izvestia. — We passed the playoff round for the first time - it's hard to describe the emotions in words. We were as serious as possible about the series with CSKA, we understood perfectly well who we were playing against. And there was no underestimation, even though we finished above the Army team in the regular season and won all their matches there. We understood that the playoffs were something else entirely. There are a lot of guys who won the Gagarin Cup with different teams. That's why it's especially nice to win such a series.

Sensations in the East

The Metallurg–Avangard series was considered by many to be a hidden finale. In the first round, these teams met because the Omsk club failed the first half of the season. But in November and December, the management and coaching staff changed, and several top players were signed — Okulov, Serebryakov, Nikolai Prokhorkin and many others.

After the new year, under new head coach Guy Boucher, Avangard almost did not lose, but managed to rise only to sixth place in the East. And I got to the current Gagarin Cup winner. Shortly before the playoffs, the highest-paid player in the league, Vladimir Tkachev, returned to the Omsk team after a long injury. His skill greatly influenced the victories in equal matches. And as a result, Avangard led 3-0 and almost solved the issue in this series. To Metallurg's credit, it should be said that he won two matches and reduced the gap to a minimum, but after the sixth match he dropped out and resigned the championship.

In the other three series of the East, the confrontations also went on for a long time. No one would expect anything else from the Yekaterinburg Avtomobilist and Kazan Ak Bars, which were equal in class. They played until the seventh match, where only in the second overtime the club from Tatarstan snatched the victory (2:1). He implemented the majority after the removal, which the Ural club did not agree with, complaining to the KHL.

The other two episodes were won by the favorites, but they sensationally delayed the series. Traktor Chelyabinsk, which became the first in the East in the regular season, lost twice to Admiral Vladivostok and brought the matter to the sixth match. The Mariners were close to repeating the sensation of two years ago, when they knocked out Salavat Yulaev and became the first Far Eastern club in history to win a playoff series.

With the score 2-2, they led 4-0 in the middle of the third period of the fifth match, but allowed Traktor to equalize and lost in overtime (4:5). In the sixth match, they already lost 0:2 and ended the season, but they proved again under the leadership of Leonid Tambiev that they can fight the leaders even taking into account the physical difficulties due to long-distance flights.

Novosibirsk "Siberia" made it to the playoffs with such difficulty that many expected its dry defeat in the series with "Salavat" after four matches. That's what happened after the two defeats in Ufa. But in Novosibirsk, the Siberians won twice in the third and fourth matches. And then, after six matches, we brought it to 3.:3. On Tuesday, they lost the decisive seventh match away 1:2 and were eliminated. At the same time, there was a scandal in the first period when the referees did not count the visitors' puck, considering that it did not cross the Ufa goal line. This episode caused great controversy. And Salavat passed the first round for the first time in three years.

Recall that the series of Yaroslavl "Locomotive" and Nizhny Novgorod "Torpedo" ended first. "Railwaymen" won 4:0. And Nizhny Novgorod's head coach Igor Larionov was fired after that. In addition, Spartak Moscow won 4-1 against Severstal Cherepovets. Meanwhile, during the series with Metallurg, Avangard appointed a new general manager, Alexey Sopin, who will assemble the team for next season. Previously, he performed similar functions as the sports director of Dynamo Moscow, from where he left in February. The team he assembled beat SKA.

The second round of the playoffs starts on April 11. In it, Lokomotiv will play with Avangard, Traktor — with Dinamo Minsk, Dynamo Moscow — with Ak Bars, Salavat Yulaev — with Spartak.