The 16th draw of the regular championship of the Continental Hockey League has ended (KHL). The main results are in the material Sport.
Dynamo's first victory in 10 years and Gusev's record For the second season in a row, the KHL regular championship included 68 matches for each of the participating clubs. One of the main events of the championship was the victory of Dynamo Moscow. Alexey Kudashov's team, one match before the end of the regular season, guaranteed themselves first place in the league table and won the Continental Cup for the first time in 10 years. In the 2013/14 season, the “blue and white” stopped at the stage of the first round of the playoffs, losing to Yaroslavl “Lokomotiv” in seven matches of the series.
The best player in Dynamo was Nikita Gusev. The Olympic champion joined the team in the summer and in one regular season he rewrote a number of club records: in assists (66) and points (89) both in one championship and for the entire season, taking into account the playoffs. Also, Gusev, having scored 89 points (23 goals and 66 assists), surpassed the achievement of Sergei Mozyakin in the number of effective actions in one regular season. The KHL record, set by the Magnitogorsk Metallurg legend in the 2016/17 season, lasted seven years.
Dynamo's main competitors — St. Petersburg SKA and Magnitogorsk Metallurg — took second and third places, respectively. After an unsuccessful period at the start of the championship, the St. Petersburg team was able to rehabilitate itself and return to the leading position. The army team from the banks of the Neva lost their first place only at the very end of the regular season. As for Metallurg, the Steelworkers in their debut season under the leadership of Andrei Razin and with Sergei Mozyakin on the coaching staff became the best club in the Eastern Conference.
The decline of CSKA, the transformation of Spartak and the sensational Lada CSKA Moscow, which won the Gagarin Cup in the last two seasons, began the third year under the leadership of Sergei Fedorov much below expectations. The Red-Blues experienced decline throughout the regular season and finished in the second four of the Western Conference for the first time in 10 years.
Another capital club, Spartak, has experienced a real transformation. The coaching staff, headed by ex-mentor of the Russian national team and advisor to the chairman of the supervisory board of the “red-whites” Alexey Zhamnov, as well as the composition, were updated. The Spartak team was replenished by Nikolai Goldobin, Pavel Poryadin, Michal Tchaikovsky, Alexander Burmistrov, Alexander Pashin, Ansel Galimov, Egor Filin and Alexander Belyaev. As the season progressed, Ilya Kovalchuk, Mikhail Maltsev and Dmitry Nikolaev arrived.
All the newcomers successfully integrated and helped Spartak return from fourth place in the West to the KHL playoffs. Goldobin, Morozov and Poryadin especially showed their potential: their trio became one of the best in the entire league. Goldobin even rewrote many club records for performance. In 68 matches, he scored 78 points (37+41).
In addition to Spartak, Muscovites' conference competitors Severstal and Torpedo had a powerful season. These clubs were called in the press and among fans an example of bright and attacking hockey that attracts attention and interest.
One of the main sensations was caused by the Lada. The Togliatti team, under the leadership of Oleg Bratash, returned to the KHL and from the very first season secured early access to the playoffs.
In the East, Ak Bars surprised with their results. Together with Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, the Kazan team reached the final of the Gagarin Cup last season and lost to CSKA in seven matches. In the new championship, the club did not easily finish in the top four, guaranteeing itself the advantage of home ice at the start of the playoffs. The team's performance itself became a reason for criticism from fans and the media.
“Technician” for “Sibir” and the return of “Amur” to the playoffs At the end of January, a little more than a month before the end of the regular season, “Sibir” was fined four points. Unexpectedly for everyone, it turned out that defender Fedor Gordeev has American sports citizenship. It was with this flag that the hockey player was announced for the KHL season. In four matches — twice with Barys and once each with Avtomobilist and Avangard — Sibir played with four foreign players in the squad, while the limit on foreigners is three players. The KHL handed down four technical defeats to the Novosibirsk club. “Siberia” lost to “Avtomobilist” and “Avangard” anyway, but won two matches with “Barys”. Before being deprived of four points, Novosibirsk was in the top eight of the East, but after the KHL verdict they dropped out of the playoff zone.
The Techies of Siberia intensified the fight for the last place in the Gagarin Cup from the Eastern Conference, with Neftekhimik and Amur also laying claim to it. It was the Khabarovsk club that, at the end of the championship, guaranteed itself into the playoffs for the first time since 2018.
All pairs of the first round of the playoffs:
Western Conference
Dynamo (Moscow) — Dynamo (Minsk)
- SKA — Torpedo
- Lokomotiv — CSKA
- Spartak — Severstal
Eastern Conference
- «Metallurg» — «Amur»
- «Vanguard» — «Lada» < /li>
- «Salavat Yulaev» — «Tractor»
- «Ak Bars» — «Avtomobilist»
New KHL records
- Nikita Gusev— the best scorer in the history of the KHL in one regular season (89). He is also the first player who managed to score more than 80 points and make more than 60 assists in at least two seasons.
- Vadim Shipachev (Ak Bars)is the best scorer in the history of the league in the regular season (792 points). He (917) ranks second in the ranking of the best scorers in the KHL, taking into account the playoffs, and is second only to Sergei Mozyakin (928).
- Nikita Mikhailis (Metallurg) is the eighth player in KHL history to score 6 points in one match.
- Ilya Kovalchuk is the second player in KHL history in the number of goals scored into an empty net (14). The Spartak forward shares the record with Alexander Radulov.
- Torpedo and Metallurgscored nine goals in 12 minutes and 46 seconds in a head-to-head match, setting a record leagues by rate of fire. It was also the first time in the KHL that they scored nine goals in one period.
- Evgeniy Biryukov (“Salavat Yulaev”)is the first player in the history of the league to play 1,000 matches in the KHL.
- For the first time in the history of the KHLfive hockey players overcame the 70-point mark at once: Nikita Gusev (89), Reed Boucher ( 78), Nikolay Goldobin (78), Jordan Weale (76) and Vladimir Tkachev (75).
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