“Vanguard” trembles, “Ak Bars” is a machine. Results of the preseason of the teams of the KHL East
August 28, 2023, 1:00 p.m. Moscow time
Andrei Razin experiments with Magnitogorsk, Barys throws him out of the fire into the cold.
After just over three days, the KHL is back on the hockey fans’ agenda. The new season of the championship begins with the match between CSKA and Ak Bars for the Opening Cup. How did the Kazan club and other representatives of the Eastern Conference spend this summer?
“Vanguard”
8 games: 4 wins – 4 losses
The Omsk Club has radically changed in the last four and a half months. The managers left the team and the search process for their replacements took the entire offseason. Only the goalie line and the link between Tkachev and Bush were left intact. Omsk head coach Mikhail Kravets actively experimented with all other hockey players; obviously for this reason the team did not leave a solid impression. On the one hand, the falcons won a beautiful victory over SKA, on the other hand, they were defeated by Lokomotiv and suffered with Neftekhimik.
So far, the last big transfer of Avangard:
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“Motorist”
7 games: 2 wins – 5 losses
The Yekaterinburg Club is one of the main outsiders this summer. Nikolai Zavarukhin’s team, which had long been expected to see a jump in results, only defeated Sochi and Dinamo Moscow, capitulating to five other rivals. The most resounding failure occurred in the confrontation with Salavat: five minutes before the end of the match, Avtomobilist led with a two-goal advantage, but in the end lost in regulation time.
“Admiral”
6 games: 3 wins – 3 losses
The Vladivostok sensation took his first off-season trophy from SKA and Avangard, after which he plunged into a lengthy training cycle. The last two control matches of the preseason “Admiral” will be played today and the day after tomorrow. This, like many other things with Leonid Tambiev, is unusual – almost all other teams tend to unload in the last days before the start of the season.
“AK Bars”
7 games: 5 wins – 2 losses
The current KHL vice-champion did not give a single reason to doubt his own status. Kazan took five wins in relatively energy-saving mode and demonstrated the impressive form of its leaders from Radulov to Shipachev. At the same time, the Ak Bars coach Zinetula Bilyaletdinov has something to think about: at least one star newcomer, Evgeny Svechnikov, has not yet integrated into the general model.
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“Amur”
8 matches: 3 wins – 5 losses
Amur started the training camp with a series of separate test matches and looked good, but at the end of the month everything went wrong and in the Major Cup in Moscow the team lost all three matches, including Kunlun. It was especially disappointing to lose to Dynamo Moscow 6-0.
“Bary’s”
8 games: 4 wins – 4 losses
The players of the Astana team turned the offseason into a real attraction: like on a roller coaster, they were first knocked down, and then sharply thrown. In the TANECO Cup, the Kazakhs suffered four defeats and took four wins from Omsk and the Blinov Cup. It is not yet clear which Barys is the real one, but after a business trip to Siberia, Andrey Skabelka was very pleased. Does the coach simply believe that he has put the team on the right path or is he sure that he will no longer take a nosedive?
“Lade”
6 games: 3 wins – 3 losses
Despite various fears, Lada has assembled a fairly decent squad, which in the preseason showed that it lives well and does not submit to anyone. The brightest bit of the summer for Togliatti is a decided victory over Magnitogorsk: coming back 1-4 is worth a lot. But even with the exception of this match, the automakers didn’t seem like just any ordinary people in KHL territory.
“Metallurgical”
6 matches: 2 wins – 4 losses
Andrei Razin, less than others, sought to get victories in the summer. In fact, no one but him dared to shoot the goalkeeper in the middle of the game in a 5×5 arrangement. But the real chances of the Ural Club are difficult to assess for another reason: two American legionnaires have not yet reached Magnitogorsk, and the expectations placed on them are enormous.
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“Neftekhimik”
7 matches: 1 win – 6 losses
Neftekhimik, which endeared itself to neutral fans this spring, flopped in the summer. Nizhnekamsk has just one win, and the tone of their game is set by the link between newcomers Bryukvin – Dergachev – Yakupov. It seems that the departure of Pavel Poryadin affected the team a lot, which, however, was to be expected. The goalkeeper’s woes also add to the fear: in August, Emil Garipov missed not only Ovechkin’s spectacular shots in Zaripov’s farewell game; sometimes less sophisticated tricks put the goalie in an unenviable position.
“Salavat Yulaev”
6 games: 3 wins – 3 losses
The main takeaway about Salavat Yulaev comes down to his main hockey player: Alexander Khmelevsky continues to burn in the game and, regardless of partners and rivals, strengthens his team. Another positive moment is the increase in performance: 19 goals in six matches is quite a decent result, which gives Ufa fans hope that the club will move a little closer to its offensive traditions.
“Siberia”
4 games: 2 wins – 2 losses
Sibir has played the fewest preseason games in the East, and it is very difficult to make an unequivocal clinical picture of them. It is not entirely clear what kind of hockey David Nemirovsky is going to play. On the one hand, he himself is a supporter of the offensive style, on the other hand, this commitment has not yet manifested itself in practice. In four matches in the Puchkov Cup, the Siberians scored just eight goals, and half of them came at the gates of depressed Sochi.
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“Tractor”
7 matches: 6 wins – 1 loss
Chelyabinsk ends the summer with the best win-loss ratio. The only opponent who could deflect them was Ak Bars. However, what was embarrassing before is now embarrassing: Traktor is rather passive up front, so he rarely scores. Last season, Gatiyatulina did not have a plan B in case of problems with the defense. And if there is no backup strategy even now, then the successes of August will soon be completely worthless.
