Hockey "Lokomotiv" won the Gagarin Cup. Why is this important?

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl became the winner of the Gagarin Hockey Cup in 2025. In the final of the playoffs, the team of head coach Igor Nikitin beat Traktor Chelyabinsk. For the team that recovered from the 2011 plane crash, this is the first triumph in 22 years. What is remarkable about the success of the Yaroslavl club is in the material of Izvestia.

The first victory after the tragedy

The most terrible tragedy in world hockey is connected with the name of Lokomotiv. On September 7, 2011, a Yak-42 plane carrying a team to Minsk for the first match of the next season crashed near Yaroslavl Tunoshna airport. The aircraft rolled out of the air strip during takeoff, did not have time to gain altitude and hit the radio beacon with its wing, after which it crashed to the ground and caught fire. There were 37 passengers and eight crew members on board the plane. 43 people died on the spot, hockey player Alexander Galimov suffered burns to 90% of his body and died five days later in intensive care, only engineer Alexander Sizov survived.

• Lokomotiv flew to the game in a combat team — 26 players, four coaches and seven members of staff went to Minsk. The team was on the rise and determined to surpass last year's result when it reached the semi-finals of the Gagarin Cup. That summer, it was headed by Canadian coach Brad McCrimmon, who received a scattering of good-quality Russian players, including local students and recent youth, and experienced foreign players. The leader of that "Locomotive" was striker Ivan Tkachenko — throughout his career he anonymously donated large sums for the treatment of children, and made the last transfer of 500 thousand rubles from his phone 15 minutes before the disaster.

• Immediately after the tragedy, the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) decided that Lokomotiv would be revived. The club began to form a team of youth players, and also received the right to invite one hockey player from other teams. Already in December, the new Lokomotiv started playing in the Major Hockey League (the second most important tournament in Russia), and from the following season it fully returned to the KHL. In 2014, Yaroslavl became the bronze medalists of the Russian championship and since then they have regularly claimed the Gagarin Cup, but have not won it in any way.

A long-lived coach

• At the beginning of the 2021/22 season, the management of Lokomotiv made, as it turned out later, a fateful decision. They invited Igor Nikitin, who had previously spent four successful years at CSKA, to the post of head coach. He led the army team to the Gagarin Cup in 2019, took it to the playoff finals twice more, and won the regular season with it three times. To this day, Nikitin remains the only coach in the KHL who has won both the first and second seasons in one year. Despite all these regalia, after losing in the 2021 finals, Nikitin was fired from CSKA and then ended up at Lokomotiv.

• From the moment of the disaster to Nikitin's appointment, the Yaroslavl club changed its head coach 12 times. But the former Army coach has received a huge amount of trust, which is a pretty bold decision not only for Lokomotiv, but also for any other KHL club. Nikitin was given the opportunity to build a team on his own and did not require him to achieve quick results. The club really started moving forward, trying not to miss a single step. In the first season with Nikitin, Lokomotiv crashed out of the Gagarin Cup in the 1/8 finals, a year later in the quarterfinals, and in 2024 lost in the final to Magnitogorsk Metallurg.

A team of students

• This season, Lokomotiv has acquired another striking feature. Nikitin almost completely assembled a team of Yaroslavl students — many of them already wore the club's uniform as children when they learned about his death 14 years ago. About 15 players, that is, two thirds of the squad, somehow passed the Lokomotiv system before joining the main team, and this is a unique phenomenon for modern hockey. This approach has its drawbacks, which Nikitin tried to avoid.

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.

• Firstly, it would be extremely difficult for such a team to instill an attacking style of play, and instead they relied on defense and systematic hockey, which attracted criticism from fans and journalists. Secondly, the club lacked creative players, which was largely the reason for last year's defeat to Metallurg. The invitation of Alexander Radulov, a bright and unrestrained striker who dreamed of winning his second Gagarin Cup in 14 years, helped to correct this.

Last year's rematch

• The correctness of the chosen path was once again proved in the last regular season. When all the components came together, Lokomotiv took first place in the standings, ahead of all the teams not only in their Western Conference, but also in the Eastern one. Throughout the season, the team did not experience any noticeable difficulties, including in the goalkeeper position, which often determines success in the playoffs.

• Lokomotiv fully revealed itself directly in the fight for the Gagarin Cup. The team passed the most serious test in the quarterfinals, when it faced the Omsk Avangard. Yaroslavl allowed the 3-1 score in their favor to transfer the series to the seventh match and won it in the second overtime. As it turned out, it was an early final — in the remaining series, Salavat Yulaev and Traktor Chelyabinsk managed to catch only one opening match, after which Lokomotiv won four in a row.

• Yaroslavl suffered only five defeats in the entire playoffs - the last club that was so confident of winning the championship title was CSKA Nikitina in 2019, which lost in just four matches. For Lokomotiv, this Gagarin Cup was the first in history — the trophy has been held since 2009. Lokomotiv's previous success before the KHL dates back to 2003, meaning Yaroslavl had been waiting 22 years for the title of the country's best team.

Why is this important?

• For the whole sport, Lokomotiv has become an example of how a team that has gone through tragedy can achieve victories again, not by buying players and quickly winning trophies, but by carefully nurturing the team while maintaining ties with their hometown. Yaroslavtsev's success has become one of the most dramatic and romantic sports stories at the same time. To confirm this, the Lokomotiv hockey players first took the Gagarin Cup to the memorial dedicated to the deceased teammates.