"When we keep score, everything turns into a not-so-good picture."

One of the main events of January in the KHL was the severe crisis of Dynamo Moscow. During the first month of 2026, the team lost eight of the 11 KHL regular season matches. Taking into account the fact that in the second half of December she had four defeats in six meetings, the decline has been dragging on for a month and a half. As a result, the blue and white, who had previously been confidently in the top 4 of the Western Conference, fell to seventh place.

Their particular problem was their inability to maintain an advantage of two or more goals. In the last game on January 30, Dynamo lost at home to Severstal Cherepovets (2:3), leading by 2:0. Before that, on January 19, Vyacheslav Kozlov's team won against the same opponent at home following a shootout (5:4), but missed the victory in regular time, leading 4-1 in the middle of the third period. And on January 12, they won 3-1 against Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod six minutes before the end of regular time, but eventually lost in overtime 3:4. In an interview with Izvestia, Dynamo defender Artyom Sergeev shared his opinion on the reasons for the failures and told what needs to be done to improve the result.

"When you're scoring, you have to act brazenly and confidently, not give up the initiative"

— Why is it the second time in a home match against Severstal that you have missed a solid advantage, and now it has also turned into a defeat in regular time?

— The same rake as then. I think we didn't play well at some points. It's hard to talk about it in hot pursuit — you need to watch the video analysis of the match and understand what happened.

— What conclusions did the players and coaching staff come to when analyzing the game against Torpedo and the previous match against Severstal, where the advantage was similarly missed?

— The conclusions were that when you score, you need to act brazenly and confidently, and not give the initiative. But you see how it turns out. We are not able to do what we are trying to agree on.

— Are these psychological problems?

— Initially, no, it wasn't psychology. But now, of course, everything is growing into this particular problem.

"There is no catastrophe — we have not gone anywhere yet"

— Dynamo has now dropped to seventh place in the West. Would it be a disaster to get into the playoffs with him, considering that a month ago we were quietly in the top four?

— There is no catastrophe — we have not gone anywhere yet. Neither from the sixth nor from the seventh place. There are still games ahead. The main thing is to start winning regularly again, and then the situation can change dramatically.

— Can we talk about the psychological pit the team is in?

— It's not exactly a psychological pit. It's just that when you don't win, the team's confidence disappears. It is a team one. You need to start winning to get it back.

— Has anything changed in tactics lately? In December, Dynamo played well defensively, even winning with a minimum of shots at other people's goal, as in the shootout derby with CSKA (1-0). Why are they skipping more now?

— We didn't play defensively then either. It was the opponent who forced us to play like that, plus most of us worked well. And I was lucky. Now the luck is gone, most of them don't work. I can't say that we started playing worse. Maybe even better, no matter how strange it may sound now against the background of the current results. But then again, when we keep score, all this literally turns into a not very good picture.