On March 25, the KHL decided on the second participant in the Gagarin Cup semifinals. It was Avtomobilist, who in the fifth game of the second round series of the KHL playoffs won a resounding victory over SKA (5-4). Nikolai Zavarukhin’s team ended the series: 4-1, for the first time in the history of Yekaterinburg hockey, they advanced to the third round of the Gagarin Cup. In turn, for SKA this season was over.
Well, the KHL’s idea of getting away from the painful SKA – CSKA Western Conference final was achieved in a rather unexpected way. The two army clubs will now definitely not meet in the current playoffs, since for the first time since the 2013/2014 season, SKA and CSKA together did not reach the third round of the Gagarin Cup. 10 years ago, SKA itself beat CSKA (4-0 in the series) in the first round and then lost to Lokomotiv (2-4 in the series) in the Western Conference semi-finals. Now the Moscow army team was eliminated in the first round by Lokomotiv (1-4) and SKA in the second round by Avtomobilist (1-4).
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For SKA, this season result cannot be described as anything other than a failure. The St. Petersburg club will not play in the Gagarin Cup semifinals for the first time in 10 years, and the five games won in the playoffs were the worst result for the St. Petersburg army team in the last 14 years. , when the club was eliminated in the first round, losing to Dynamo Riga (1-3). At the same time, the 2020 Gagarin Cup, which was completed ahead of schedule due to the coronavirus pandemic, was not taken into account. SKA then eliminated Vityaz (4-0) in the first round.
The current playoffs were Roman Rotenberg’s third attempt to win the Gagarin Cup as a coach. And again his SKA did not reach at least the final, this time stopping in the second round.
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What led to this result? You can talk about injuries, which is what Rotenberg did in the press conference after the fifth game. And, of course, the losses of Alexander Nikishin, Andrei Pedan, Borna Rendulic and Vladimir Alistrov were painful for the club, especially the absence of Nikishin in the series with Avtomobilist. No amount of roster depth could help adequately replace Alexander. Without a leading defender, SKA’s power play collapsed and even-strength play declined noticeably.
But to compensate for other losses, SKA, which has a deep and very high-quality squad, had all the necessary resources. At the same time, the army rival managed without key striker and captain Sergei Shirokov and one of the main defenders, Jesse Blacker. The first played only one game in this series and the second was injured in the first half of the third game. And it is clear that the ability of the Ural Club to form a long bench was much more modest than that of its St. Petersburg rival.
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The SKA lost to a systemic rival, which did not depend on any specific leader, but rather on a game model that assumed a significant degree of interchangeability. The heroes of Avtomobilist were both top players Alexey Makeev and Alexey Byvaltsev, as well as modest workers like Semyon Kizimov and Stepan Khripunov. SKA itself did not have a system in its arsenal that worked so well; The loss of several hockey players seriously weakened the team, and here fair questions arise for the army coaching staff and for Rotenberg himself. True, Roman Borisovich does not give them answers and prefers to focus on external factors.
At the same time, if we return to the SKA personalities, then it is worth admitting that last offseason the army team made a mistake with the selection. And this happens if every year you update the composition by more than half, following impulsive impulses. For example, a year ago, Rotenberg easily and freely parted ways with Nikita Gusev, who this season became the top scorer of the KHL regular season and, even with a serious injury, dragged Dynamo Moscow to the playoffs until the final. Gusev was labeled a “non-cup” and replaced by Sergei Tolchinsky. Tolchinsky, 29, signed a five-year contract and scored 0 points in five series games with Avtomobilist.
Similar mistakes have happened before to the management of the army club, but this time the number of errors in the selection turned out to be too great. Another newcomer to SKA, Canadian Brendan Laipsic, even obtained Russian citizenship after signing a two-year contract with him. But there is every confidence that Laipsik will finish his contract elsewhere. In the playoffs, Rotenberg only remembered the striker’s existence twice, and Brendan spent the rest of the time in the non-playing team area.
Alex Galchenyuk, 30, who also joined the SKA roster last offseason, played well in the last two playoff games, but where was he during the previous part of the series? One day he didn’t even make the squad for a game. But next year, Galchenyuk will enter the top of the highest-paid hockey players in the entire league, having spent 1/9 of the army team’s payroll on himself. Alexander Kadeikin did not even reach his potential, whose second return to St. Petersburg was a big personal mistake for the player himself, as the SKA did nothing but keep him in reserve and regularly removed him from matches when he switched to playing in three lines.
Belarusian defender Sergei Sapego was not at all remembered for his useful actions in the decisive matches of the season, and Maxim Fedotov, transferred from Torpedo, whom the SKA coach had already managed to reward with a comparison with Cale Makar, made one of the most fatal mistakes for military equipment in the “Motorist” series. It was Fedotov who sharply cut in extra time of the third match, as a result of which the score of the series became 0:3.
As for the injured Rendulic, we must wish the Croatian health and a speedy recovery, but SKA also has serious doubts about his need. During the last month before the injury, the forward’s playing time ranged between 5 and 14 minutes, falling below 10:00 in almost every second game. And we are talking about a foreign player that the Army Club snatched from Sochi at the beginning of the regular season, when the Leopards were at their best. As a result, the Southern Club began to fall down the table and Rendulic never received a clear playing role in his new club.
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So it turned out that a large number of newcomers did not strengthen SKA. The main roles were played by Marat Khairullin, Vasily Glotov and Mikhail Vorobyov, each of whom spent more than his first season at the club on the banks of the Neva. Khairullin’s statistics in the regular season fell a little, but in the playoffs Marat was the soloist and did not deserve a single critical word directed at him, while Glotov and Vorobyov progressed compared to last season. That’s how it should work in hockey.
Of all the newcomers to SKA, in general, in the playoffs there could be big questions only for forward Arseniy Gritsyuk and goalkeeper Nikita Serebryakov (he did not join the club’s squad in the off-season, but at the beginning of this season) . . Everyone else played much worse than expected, leading to such an early end to the season. But there is a sense that it is precisely this kind of failure that may sober up the military club’s head coach, who seems to have realized that rebuilding the entire team every offseason is an absolutely counterproductive move. In yesterday’s press conference, Rotenberg already promised that this time he will not change 70% of the team, but that he will continue working with this core. This means that SKA can strengthen next season.
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And SKA will be even stronger when it understands that a truly confident team almost always overcomes any external factors on the way to the trophy. Whether it be injuries, refereeing errors or even moving to a new stadium during the season. But although the military is not willing to accept defeats, it resists them after the fact in the information field, which only serves to hide itself even further from the eyes of the public. And if we have already become accustomed to Roman Rotenberg’s speeches at press conferences throughout the season, then the powerful attack of the president of the board of directors of the SKA, Alexander Medvedev, against the judges is something new. And this novelty seems like hysteria, which certainly does not sit well with such respected people.
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SKA lost to Avtomobilist not because of arbitration. Not because of the “young” squad, the injuries and the SKA Arena. The army team lost because the opponent was stronger. And the sooner St. Petersburg recognizes this fact and begins to conscientiously work on internal problems, the better it will be for them.
