The KHL deprived Sibir of 4 points! There was a secret foreign player on the team that no one knew about.
Ekaterina Vasilevich January 17, 2024, 22:45 Moscow time Audio version: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Due to a stupid mistake by the management, the club may lose the playoffs.
Khabarovsk will wake up happy. During the day, the chances of making the playoffs seemed vague, but at night everything was just fantastic. Only Neftekhimik could be happier than them, who after the defeat against Lokomotiv was already in the playoff zone. There is no adjective in Russian that can describe this “Siberian” mistake. Neither childish nor stupid, but much worse. The Novosibirsk team suffered four technical defeats: two due to victories over Barys (and one of these matches began the history of the new stadium). Two other technicians are not so important: the Novosibirsk team still lost those matches against Avangard and Avtomobilist.
I think the situation does not fit the minds of 100% of Sibir fans and, in fact, many hockey fans. If recently it seemed that Siberia would easily enter the playoffs from eighth or even seventh place, now all that remains is to shrug our shoulders. Minus four points. Mathematically, the chances of making the playoffs are still pretty good. It’s true that now I’m definitely only in eighth place. But where is the math and where is the life with real opponents, and even with such density in the updated table? After the count, the Novosibirsk team is in ninth position and only one point ahead of Amur, which has one game less.
Related materials
“Siberia” left the playoff zone after losing 4 points due to violation of KHL regulations
The situation is ridiculous. By some miracle, Sibir had a fourth foreign player in his squad, whose status neither the head coach, nor the general director, nor the sports director knew. Defender Fedor Gordeev was born in Omsk (as he himself admitted in an interview with the Championship), but before this season he had never played in Russia. According to this simple rule, he became a legionnaire through sports citizenship (differs from ordinary citizenship). Fedor, of course, has ordinary citizenship of the Russian Federation: both through his parents and through his place of birth. The sport is responsible for the country that the player can represent. So, Gordeev could play for the Canadian team, but not for the Russian team. Since the probability of going on the ice with the maple team is very small, Fedor could have gone to the Russian side quite calmly and would not have suffered serious losses. But for Siberia, which gave up control over the little things, the situation turned into a disaster.
Fyodor Gordeev
Photo: Victoria Trufanova, foto.khl.ru
After Nemirovski left, Gordeev unexpectedly stopped being included in the lineup. He really liked his game, but the new coach Krivokrasov explained everything by the loss of competition. But who? Alexandrov? Khamidulina? Gordeev’s absence raised serious doubts, because the defenders mentioned are certainly not better, but much worse. It turned out that Fedor was considered a foreign player in the league only on January 18. At the end of the season.
By the way, Sibir was lucky. Novosibirsk residents should say a huge thank you to Stefan Da Costa and Avtomobilist for Trevor Murphy’s injury. All season long, the absence of a foreign player seemed to be the club’s main problem (oh, how the fans suffered for the Canadian defender), but now his injury is a cause for joy, no matter how cynical it may seem. If Murphy had not retired and continued playing, and Gordeev had gone on the ice with him, then at best half of the points would have been written off. At worst, almost all of them, because Fedor played regularly until recently, missing games mainly due to league fines.
Did the league act fairly? Absolutely. A pure violation of the league’s sports regulations, and even of the instructions of the Ministry of Sports. Yes, Sibir hockey players gave their all and achieved victories against Barys (even this was not easy at the beginning of the season). But who knows how Amur and Neftekhimik would have played if they had one more foreign player. The only thing that can be blamed on the KHL is that “the automated system for checking the legitimacy of the use of selected players to participate in the match did not work.” Then the sanctions would have come immediately after the first game of the season. The Novosibirsk team lost anyway, but would surely have saved points for the matches against Barys. But the league is not obligated to control what the club’s management should do. Also, in some situations, a robot needs a person. And this is precisely one of those moments: it was difficult to determine Gordeev’s sports citizenship. But let’s be honest: we must definitely look for the culprit not in the league, nor in the Hockey Federation, nor in the Ministry of Sports, but in Siberia itself. The game on the ice was just getting going when it came from where we weren’t expecting it.
Kirill Fastovsky
Photo: Dmitry Soroka, foto.khl.ru
If the chairman of the board of directors of “Sibir” Andrei Travnikov (who is also the governor of the Novosibirsk region) still had doubts about whether or not to dismiss the club’s management after such a controversial season, now there should be no doubts left. The Novosibirsk team managed to go from being a bad example of offensive hockey to becoming a team that can be watched at times. But a mistake like this should not go unpunished. There is nothing wrong with change (especially when the old management is not moving forward). Leaving such incompetent leadership in charge is shooting yourself in the foot and wasting money. And the best thing is that the management resigns on its own (although sports director Sergei Klimovich can leave immediately after the match with Salavat), thus recognizing his incredible mistake.
Sergei Klimovich
Photo: hcsibir.ru
I would like to recommend returning to the old LDS Sibir stadium. There were KHL bronze medals, the best game and victories. The new stadium did not seem to accept the team: the season was too difficult. But everything is more prosaic. We need different management. A club that has such a mess in its leadership will never be able to win the Cup and generally play consistently. Most of all, I feel for the hockey players in this situation. Because whoever he is, he definitely didn’t deserve to miss the playoffs in such a perverted way. Especially the third attacking trio and Anton Krasotkin. And it hurts to imagine what the atmosphere will be in the locker room in the morning and how difficult it will be to prepare for the match against Salavat. Yes, they are athletes, and the very definition of this profession almost says that all problems should be left off the field. But when those you fully trust put a stop to it, anyone will give up.
