The start of the season was marked by a severe slide of the favourites. At the same time, it is mainly the clubs that stumble that, on paper, seem to have taken only the right steps. The most convincing in terms of play in the first week was Salavat Yulaev, who drastically lost his depth and quickly adapted to the new tactical model, while almost 50% of CSKA was renewed.
But Dynamo is seriously lacking, and the off-season goalkeeping reshuffle only makes things worse in the short term. Yesterday everyone was again distracted from SKA’s purely playing problems by Roman Rotenberg, who said that comments about the club are written from abroad, and now 120 minutes without scoring a goal are taking a backseat. And while the central clubs are attracting attention, the Metallurg champions lost three of four games at the start of the season, two of them to Neftekhimik. What is going on?
The first reason here may be an injury, and after that, in principle, nothing can be written. At the beginning of the season, Metallurg plays without two of its key center backs – last season’s top scorer Danila Yurov and Denis Zernov. At the pre-season presentation of the team, Andrei Razin promised that Yurov would return to the team in mid-September, and Zernov only in November. Moreover, even in the optimal version of the team that became the champion, Igor Geraskin played in the center, winning less than 40% of the confrontations at the point. In the summer, Metallurg seemed to be looking for a center – it was already written that Byron Fraze was going to Magnitogorsk, but the experienced Canadian turned to the North-West.
Danila Yurov
Photo: Maxim Shmakov, foto.khl.ru
However, two important wingers are missing. Daniil Vovchenko’s life has taken a strange turn in the past year: a year ago, everyone was bewildered by his move to Metallurg, then Vovchenko responded to the criticism with a championship goal in the fourth match against Lokomotiv. At the end of August, Daniil fell under the terrible power of Roman Abrosimov, who caused a huge scandal, and when the hockey player was lying in a hospital bed, his wife made revelations on social networks. It is not entirely clear when Daniil will play hockey now and in what form he will return.
Roman Kantserov, who became a sensation in the last playoffs, will also return only in November, as will Zernov. It turns out that at the beginning of the season Metallurg had almost half of the championship attack unable to play. Someone was surprised to see 19-year-old Andrei Kozlov on the front line in the first match of the season, but Razin simply did not have much more options. In the last matches he is accompanied by another 19-year-old, Valentin Zhugin, as well as Nikolai Mayorov and Valery Sapozhnikov, who played last season in the VHL (no, not the son of the “drunk Sapozhnikov” from Metallurg in the 90s, about whom Razin recently recalled).
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Maxim Karpov (and this was quite expected) and Nikita Grebenkin also left the team during the off-season, which was certainly an unpleasant surprise. On paper, many players signed contracts with Metallurg, but most of them came to the newly created farm club. Stanley Cup winner Scott Wilson and young Daniil Bashkirov from Salavat were signed for the main squad. At the same time, frankly, the offer for Bashkirov no longer looked like a request from the coaching staff, but part of some kind of agent game.
With all this, Metallurg entered the season. Moreover, if a year ago the prospects for the renewed Magnitka at the start of the season seemed very vague and the team itself was frankly raw, now, as Razin noted, everyone has a different attitude towards the champions. True, it was hard to imagine that Lokomotiv and SKA would somehow not find the right environment for Metallurg, but the story of Neftekhimik is completely different.
The story of Razin’s friendship and enmity with Oleg Leontyev has already been described in Telegram channels, but let’s recall it again. Razin began his coaching career in the VHL at Kristall Saratov, replacing Leontiev in his post; however, the former Magnitogorsk defender remained on the staff. Leontyev went with his former VHL teammate to the KHL, assisting him at Avtomobilist. When Razin returned to the league in December 2017 after a six-month absence, he set up the former headquarters, but left the club after just five matches due to the fact that he did not receive a full contract, but only an employment contract. Leontyev did not shy away from legal subtleties and stayed with the “sailors”, where he made his full debut as a main player of the KHL.
Well, last year two players who were expelled from Magnitogorsk joined Neftekhimik. It was not about forming some kind of revenge team against Razin: in Nizhnekamsk, players were gathered who were supposed to help here and now. This is how Artyom Zagidulin ended up in Tatarstan – before the start of last season he was perceived as the number one of Metallurg, but lost the competition to Ilya Nabokov. Next to him in Neftekhimik plays Jean-Sébastien Di, who received 80 million from Magnitka, but played only 19 games for the club. The result is amazing: Zagidulin saved 57 of 59 shots in two games for his native club, Dee scored the winning goal in the last minute of the second game.
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And it turned out that there are at least three people in Neftekhimik who really want to beat this Metallurg. The calendar reserved two matches at the beginning of the season for the implementation of these plans. This does not cause panic at the moment, but Magnitogorsk’s schedule is rather unsightly: Ak Bars, Salavat, the third part of Neftekhimik and the same players Spartak and Severstal are coming up.
What can Metallurg do after such a start, without waiting for the injured to recover? First of all, somehow come to their senses psychologically. From the outside it seems that the championship in the preparatory phase calmed the players and coaches or created the feeling that they were doing everything without mistakes and that any step they took would lead to victory. In general, it is necessary to come to their senses: the sticky champagne remains in the spring.
Sergey Gomolyako
Photo: Maxim Shmakov, foto.khl.ru
Well, Sergei Gomolyako and the management still need to strengthen the team. The problem of the center, as already mentioned above, was raised even before the start of the season and was not resolved. In addition, there are still a large number of hockey players on the market without a contract, who are now hardly in a position to negotiate and make the best effort. For the past six months, teams have been trying to copy Metallurg’s recipe for success, and now last year’s methods alone will not be enough.
