Old matches about the main thing: Lokomotiv and Ak Bars will play in the final after 17 years

The Gagarin Cup final between Lokomotiv and Ak Bars is not just a good sign for the KHL, but an almost archival photo that was suddenly taken out of a drawer and put in a new frame. It was these teams that played the first league final in 2009. Then Ak Bars took its own. Now, 17 years later, history has brought Yaroslavl and Kazan together again. Who has a better chance of success is in the Izvestia article.

Different paths

Lokomotiv reached the finals through a real meat grinder. The semi—final with Avangard could have ended much earlier for Yaroslavl: 1-3 in the series is almost the edge. But Bob Hartley's team pulled themselves out of a very unpleasant situation, won three matches in a row (twice with superbags) and put the squeeze on Omsk in the second overtime in the seventh game. Such episodes are not forgotten. After them, there is either emptiness in the locker room, or the feeling that now you can survive anything at all.

Lokomotiv has just the second case. This team doesn't look light, bright, airy, and it doesn't need to be. The Railwaymen play as if every match can be won with patience. Shift after shift, pressure after pressure, without unnecessary gestures. If it doesn't work out beautifully, it will work out correctly. If we don't score now, we'll make a mistake later. It has its own heavy beauty.

But Ak Bars is a different kind of opponent. Kazan reached the finals more calmly and economically, defeating Metallurg in five matches. Anvar Gatiyatulin's team had more time to exhale, heal, and sort out the competitor not in a hurry, but with a cool head. In the end, it can be very expensive. Especially against an opponent who just left seven games on the ice, two overtimes, and maybe half of his nervous system.

Ak Bars generally looks the way a finalist should look: no fuss. There is a goalkeeper here, Timur Bilyalov, who can be trusted with a bad team night. There are defenders who can withstand a long siege, and those who are ready to help the attack — Miller and Lyamkin are the leaders among the playoff scorers. There are forwards who don't necessarily have to create ten chances to punish one failure. Yashkin, Barabanov, Galimov, Todd, Khmelevsky are not a set of names for a program, but people who know how to solve episodes. And in the finale, sometimes just one episode is the whole match.

Magnetic train: Loko is not helped by the championship experience, but Metallurg is back in the game

The semifinals of the Gagarin Cup are held with different moods

A good conflict

The coaching duel also promises to be interesting. Hartley is about tempo, structure and pressure. His "Locomotive" does not allow the opponent to breathe comfortably, forces him to make decisions faster and often turns the match into an exhausting job. Gatiyatulin, on the contrary, is unlikely to play an open shootout. It is more important for Ak Bars to extinguish the Yaroslavl rhythm and turn the final into a colder, positional hockey.

This series also has a historical flavor. Ak Bars has long known what the Gagarin Cup "smells like." For Kazan, the finals are not an excursion, but familiar territory. In recent years, Lokomotiv has been persistently striving to stop being a team that everyone sympathizes with and respects, and become a team that simply takes its toll every year. Without reservations. Three finals in a row is already a dynasty.

Therefore, the sign "Locomotive" – "Ak Bars" is good not only for surnames and pasts. She's good at conflict. Yaroslavl stubbornness versus Kazan composure. A team that survived an almost impossible semi-final against a team that reached the final cleaner and fresher. Hartley vs. Gatiyatulin.

It is dangerous to predict here: there are too many factors that do not fit into the tables. But it feels like this story won't end quickly. Ak Bars has freshness and experience. Lokomotiv has a character, a home start, and the very feeling of a team that has already gotten out from under the rubble and now doesn't really understand why it should be afraid of something.

"I know for sure that Lokomotiv will go down in KHL history as the club that performed a miracle by reaching the finals," Vyacheslav Fetisov, a two—time Olympic champion and three—time Stanley Cup winner, told Izvestia. — From a psychological point of view, they have the advantage, but they have spent a lot of effort. In any case, it will be interesting. I will watch and cheer for hockey with interest.

Most likely, we will have a long finale. It's not necessarily the most beautiful, but it's real. With closed matches, hard goals, nervous endings and heroes that no one has named yet. And this is perhaps the best option for a series where the past and present have come together too closely to be calm. We are waiting for the superfinal!