KHL announces nominees for the Best Coach of the Season award

The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) presented the nominees for the "Best Coach" award. This was announced on May 23 by the league's press service on the official website.

Following the results of the 2024/25 season, Igor Nikitin (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl), Benoit Gru (Traktor Chelyabinsk) and Viktor Kozlov (Salavat Yulaev Ufa) were among the candidates.

Under the leadership of Igor Nikitin, Lokomotiv won the Gagarin Cup for the first time in history. In the final series, Yaroslavl beat Traktor with a score of 4:1. In addition, the team became the best in the regular season and won the Continental Cup, with 65 wins in 89 matches.

Benoit Gru took over Traktor in May 2024, replacing Alexei Zavarukhin. In his debut season, he led the team to the second Gagarin Cup final in the club's history, and Chelyabinsk became the silver medalists of the championship. At the end of the regular season, Traktor took first place in the Eastern Conference, winning 57 of 88 matches.

In addition, Viktor Kozlov led Salavat Yulaev to the semifinals of the Gagarin Cup for the first time in six years, where the team lost to the future champions. In the regular season, Ufa finished second in the Eastern Conference with 54 wins in 87 games.

"The winners of this award were Zinetula Bilyaletdinov (twice), Oleg Znarok (four times), Milos Rzhiga, Mike Keenan, Vyacheslav Bykov, Dmitry Kvartalnov, Igor Nikitin, Bob Hartley, Sergey Fedorov (twice), Andrey Razin," the league's press service said.

The "Best Coach" award will be presented at the KHL season closing ceremony on May 29.

Yaroslavl the Wise: Lokomotiv wins Gagarin Cup for the first time in history

The Railwaymen won the final series of the Traktor playoffs after five matches.

On May 16, the KHL nominated Salavat Yulaev goalkeeper Semyon Vyazov, as well as strikers Egor Surin from Lokomotiv and Ivan Demidov, who played for SKA, for the "Best Newcomer of the KHL Season" award. The KHL noted that Vyazovoy became the team's best goalkeeper at the end of the season. Also this season, SKA's top scorer was 19-year-old Demidov, and he was also named the best rookie of the week seven times. In addition, striker Surin broke the performance record for young Lokomotiv players in the Gagarin Cup playoffs.