Last year they were cheerful. This year... not so much
KHL season has moved past the equator and it's time to look at what has been accomplished, who's been successful and who has had their share of tears. If we look at the losers, the obvious choices of Avtomobilist and Vityaz... are obvious. In the first case, the team wants to play but there's simply not many players who can perform at this level. In the other case... well, the other case is a strange mix of 70s Flyers and today's Edmonton "Oilers". On one hand you kinda see that this team might be among leaders give 2-3 years. On the other had you look at the mean faces of Yablo Diablo and Nasty Mirasty and understand that you might very well not see that day coming... and not necessarily because Vityaz management (stupid as they are) will get rid of all the promising players at the end of the season to buy new goons...
Then you've got the team we all expected to perform better, "Sibir'' Novosibirsk with one of the most promising young talents of Russia, Vladimir Tarasenko and his father at the helm. You might say that a lot was expected from this team but, honestly, their problems stem from injuries and bad luck. We all knew that Sibir was 1 line team. While they had Tarasenko-Lehtera-Enlund all was peaches. Then Lehtera got injured and....
In the West, Dinamo Riga underperformed for quite a while but now seems to be back on track, despite failing to score more than 2 goals on regular basis. But when you allow only 1 goal per game, you can still collect points. Another one of those 1 line teams, as "Amur" and "Severstal". Spartak Moscow is pretty far from the play-off zone (at least for the moment) and you could see that they'll be in trouble with all the fuss with Slovak at the beginning of the season, now Hossa Sr, will coach his son, Slovaks and the rest of the team so some good results might appear eventually.
The biggest loser at the moment (despite some people's claims that they've found their game) is Salavat Yulaev Ufa. The team with the operating budget of some 100 million USD, the reigning champions, Radulov's team... The team has serious problems and is barely holding its play-off spot. Some blame players, some blamed the coach that has been sacked now and a new one is in place but during the Euro Hockey Tour games Radulov showed that he's still the King (at least in Europe) but their three win streak ended in pretty poor 1-2 loss to Riga at home. And the team didn't look like superstars at all.
The new wonderboy of old Russia, Kuznetsov #92
As concerns teams on the rise, a lot of praise can go to SKA, Dynamo Moscow, Atlant, Dynamo Minsk and Traktor. Four of the teams are from the West. Well, you could also include Barys as they're playing pretty damn good in the East at the moment but we'll see.
SKA did everything right during the pre-season. They signed Milos Riha, a great coach, they got rid of some so-called "pensioners" and got some younger guys in the team. SKA isn't a young team but at least it isn't the oldest one in the league too.
Dynamo Moscow, coached by Oļegs Znaroks and Harijs Vītoliņš- former Latvian national team players, might lack stars but good coaching, good physical condition and players' willingness to work hard makes them the top team every year. And hard work pays off, at least during the regular season.
Atlant worked well during the pre-season and signed good players, most notably Alex Kovalev, Nikolai Zherdev, Janne Niskala and Branko Radivojevic. Swedish coaching legend Bengt Ake Gustafsson wasn't able to build a team from them but another Swede, Janne Karlsson has managed to put them on the winning track and it seems like their position in the table will improve soon... it already has improved a lot.
Dynamo Minsk success is hard to explain. The team has acquired some new players and they've obviously clicked, the team has great arena and fans, add to that some good coaching and you've got a decent team.
But the biggest prize goes to Traktor Chelyabinsk, the leaders of the Eastern conference Before the season started they got a pretty damn good budget increase and combining great selection of players and young Evgeni Kuznetsov's talent, they've proven themselves to be one of the top contenders to Gagarin Cup. While the so-called big 4 of the East (Ufa, Magnitogorsk, Kazan, Omsk) struggle and the early season surprise of Amur Khabarovsk starts to fade away, they remain strong atop of the Eastern conference table. And honestly, at the moment, I can't see who could take their nr.1 spot in the East.
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