After the All-Star Game of the Kontinental Hockey League, which is 9 and December 10 was held in St. Petersburg, big hockey stayed in the city on the Neva. But if the iconic event for the KHL was hosted by the new SKA Arena, then the next tournament – the Channel One Cup – was held at the current home site of the army club.
Disputes about the importance of the tournament and opinions about the Russian team As in 2022, the Channel One Cup was held outside the Euro Hockey Tour calendar. As part of the tournament, a mini-championship in the “3 on 3” format was also organized. Initially, the participants included the teams of Russia 25, Belarus, Kazakhstan and China. However, shortly before the start of the championship, the Chinese side decided to skip the competition. The Russian Hockey Federation explained this by “reasons that do not depend on the host country.” Later, the first vice-president of the Russian Hockey Federation and part-time head coach of the Russia 25 team, Roman Rotenberg, told reporters that the Chinese Ministry of Sports had banned its national hockey federation from participating in the Channel One Cup. For what reason is officially unknown.
Instead of the Chinese, a new team was announced for the tournament – “Stars and VHL”. It included leading young players from clubs in the Continental Hockey League (KHL) and the All-Russian Hockey League (VHL). The team was headed by the head coach of the VHL club “SKA-Neva” Nikolai Voevodin.
As for the Russian national team, “Russia 25” became a participant in the Channel One Cup. The main Russian team, which competed at last year’s tournament, has not participated in any other competitions since then. Since the summer, she has been left without a head coach – the contract with the current coach of the capital's Spartak, Alexei Zhamnov, was not renewed. The changers of the foundation – “Russia 25” – were headed by Roman Rotenberg. He also led this team during the big May tour.
The project itself was created last fall, but to this day disputes and discussions continue around it. At first glance, because of the name of the team, one gets the feeling that “25” is the maximum age for the team. But in reality we are talking about the average age of its players. Therefore, hockey players over 25 years old also play for the team.
The holding of the tournament itself turned out to be controversial. Discussions about the need to hold it were actively held last year, when the Channel One Cup ceased to be a stage of the Eurotour. Moreover, one of the main arguments of opponents of organizing the tournament was the difficult KHL calendar. Both in the 2022/23 season and in the current season, the regular season includes 68 matches for each club, and the pause in December is the only one for the entire season. This pause is precisely occupied by the KHL All-Star Game and the Channel One Cup, which for the leaders of the league clubs eliminates the opportunity to take time for a short rest and increases the risk of injury.
For this reason, not all players called up to the national team last year eventually arrived at the team's location. A similar situation repeated this time. It is interesting that the decision not to involve the main Russian team in the tournament was to some extent connected with the possible refusal of hockey players to play for it for a number of reasons. “Russia 25” did not escape this fate.
Russia has the trophy againThe final composition of the Russia 25 team included:
goalkeepers: Sergei Ivanov, Artemy Pleshkov, Nikita Serebryakov;
defenders: Timofey Davydov, Alexander Elesin, Artem Zemchenok, Ilya Karpukhin, Bogdan Konyushkov, Nikita Lyamkin, Alexander Nikishin, Artem Sergeev, Nikita Smirnov, Maxim Fedotov;
forwards: Vasily Atanasov, Zakhar Bardakov, Mikhail Vorobyov, Vasily Glotov, Nikita Grebenkin, Nikita Dynyak, Valentin Zykov, Nikita Korostelev, Prokhor Poltapov, Nikolay Polyakov, Ilya Safonov, Maxim Sorkin, Sergey Tolchinsky, Marat Khairullin, Andrey Chivilev, Maxim Shabanov.
In three matches of the main tournament, Roman Rotenberg’s team won three victories. In the opening match of the championship, the team “Stars and VHL” was beaten (5:2), and then the teams of Belarus (5:3) and Kazakhstan (5:2).
In all three meetings, the Russians were forced to win back. In the game with the “Stars,” Rotenberg’s team, having conceded first, scored four goals in a row in response and subsequently brought the matter to victory. In the match against the Belarusians, the Russians lost the lead three times, but at the end of regulation time they were able to take the lead and consolidate the winning score. The decisive match with Kazakhstan developed in a similar way: the team of now ex-Barys coach Galym Mambetaliev took the lead twice during the match, but at the end of the second period the Russians not only restored the status quo, but also took the lead with a double advantage, subsequently increasing his.
As a result, “Russia 25” achieved a 100 percent result: three wins out of three with 15 goals scored in total. For the Russians, this victory at the Channel One Cup was the first since 2020. The previous two tournaments – including in 2021, when it was held as part of the Eurotour – were won by the national teams of Finland and Belarus, respectively.
There were some losses. For the Russia 25 team, Zakhar Bardakov was unable to play in any of the matches, and one of the main stars of the KHL this season, Vasily Atanasov, received a blow to the head at the end of the game with Belarus and ended his participation in the Cup ahead of schedule. Perhaps the young striker will miss the first few matches for Torpedo after the regular season resumes soon.
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