Rotenberg's first triumph, Tolchinsky's club record and the Da Costa scandal: what happens in the KHL regular season

The triumph of SKA and the battle for the playoffs

Less than two weeks before the end of the KHL championship, the fate of the Continental Cup, which is awarded to the best team of the regular season, was decided.

This time there was no fight.

Immediately seized the leadership in the SKA table, although it lost several fundamental confrontations in the fall and winter, it still retained the first line and took the honorary trophy for the third time.

Thus, the hegemony of CSKA was interrupted, bypassing its competitors over the past three years.

It is noteworthy that it was the army men of Moscow who could prevent Roman Rotenberg's wards from winning the cup, but they lost even the theoretical chances to catch up with them after the defeat from Lokomotiv.

The wards of Sergei Fedorov could not oppose anything to their rivals on their ice and lost to the Yaroslavl team for the third time this season, and with a big score.

They were able to respond to four goals of their opponents only with an accurate throw by Mikhail Grigorenko.

This week was not the most successful for CSKA.

After all, the team not only suffered the 24th defeat, but also could not extend the record streak without penalty minutes.

At the time Vitaly Abramov was sent off, the red and blue did not go to the bench for 202 minutes 47 seconds.

The previous achievement belonged to Avangard (184:51) and was set four years earlier.

True, all this is unlikely to greatly upset the army team, because they have long completed their main task - they guaranteed themselves a ticket to the playoffs.

In total, 12 participants in the Gagarin Cup have already been determined, five of which were last week.

These included Avtomobilist, Metallurg, Avangard, Vityaz and Salavat Yulaev.

Thus, in the top 16 there are only four vacant seats - two in each of the conferences.

But if in the West Severstal and Minsk Dynamo are unlikely to lose theirs, then in the East everything is much more interesting.

While "Admiral" is slightly ahead of the pursuers (71 points), "Neftekhimik" and "Amur" are on a par (both - 67), and "Tractor", although three points behind, has a meeting in reserve.

And so far, it is Nizhnekamsk that looks preferable in the context of the struggle for getting into the top eight.

The other day, Neftekhimik won a third victory in a row, which owes much to defender Ilya Khokhlov.

In the away game with Metallurg, he scored three times and became only the third representative of his role to score three or more goals per game in the current regular season.

Previously, Gleb Koryagin from Amur and Alex Grant from Barys managed to do this.

Successes of Tkachev and Tolchinsky

Surely in the fall, many expected that Avangard would also fight for a place in the playoffs before the last round.

At the start of the championship, Omsk residents were beaten six times in a row and gave the worst start since the founding of the Continental Hockey League.

But the arrival of Mikhail Kravets on the coaching bridge and the excellent form of the leaders helped him overcome the crisis.

First of all, we are talking about Vladimir Tkachev and Sergey Tolchinsky, who, together with Reed Bush, formed one of the most unstoppable links in the league.

And now the Russians have not only updated their personal performance records (52 and 50 points, respectively), but also produced one of the brightest seasons in the history of the club.

Only Jaromir Jagr (53, 2008/09), Denis Parshin (56, 2014/15) and Roman Chervenka (61, 2010/11) scored more than them in one regular season.

But if Tkachev (23 + 29) and Bush (28 + 21) were balancing between the organization of attacks and their completion, then Tolchinsky focused on the functions of a playmaker.

By this time, he had already managed to assist partners 35 times and rewrote the Hawks' club record for the number of assists.

According to this indicator, he bypassed Dmitry Pestunov, who broke out with 34 passes in the 2008/09 championship.

28 goals for Shalunov tournament and Yezhov's 30th cracker

At the same time, Maxim Shalunov entered his name in the history of Lokomotiv.

In that same match with CSKA, he not only scored an assist and helped the railroad workers extend their unbeaten streak to five meetings, but he himself hit the goal of the former team.

Thanks to this, he reached the mark of 28 goals for the tournament and surpassed the achievement of Andrei Kovalenko, who lasted 21 years.

At the moment, only three teams in the KHL can boast such a long winning streak.

In addition to the railway workers, five meetings are not inferior to Ak Bars and Salavat Yulaev.

But if the former is dragged by Alexander Radulov, who scored an incredible move, who for the seventh time in his career overcame the bar of fifty points (22 + 30), then the success of the latter is largely due to the stability of their goalkeepers.

Alexander Kareev and Ilya Yezhov have a high percentage of saved shots (92.6 and 92.5 respectively) and they are in the top 15 most reliable goalkeepers of the championship.

In addition to them, only Lokomotiv partners Daniil Isaev and Ivan Bocharov can boast of this.

And although this season the goalkeepers of the red-greens more often left their gates intact, Yezhov still surpasses them in the total number of games to zero.

He scored another, 30th shutout in a meeting with Vityaz and came in 12th place in terms of the number of crackers, equaling Igor Bobkov.

The Olympic champion of Pyeongchang Vasily Koshechkin (90) is in the lead.

Vasily Demchenko is not included in this elite group, but he may soon become the fifth goalkeeper to win 30 games in a KHL season.

Now the Avangard goalkeeper has stopped at the mark of 29 wins.

The same Koshechkin (32), Janis Kalnins, Kari Ramyo (both 33 each) and Jakub Kovarzh (38) have more.

Unlike their colleagues, Sochi goalkeepers will probably want to quickly forget the current championship.

After 63 meetings, the Leopards have 237 missed goals, which is an anti-record in the KHL.

It is curious that they rewrote their own achievement of 14 years ago.

Then their opponents scored one goal less. 

Conflict with the operator

However, one of the most discussed hockey players of the week was Stefan Da Costa, who was at the center of the scandal.

The incident took place in the third period of the away match with Amur, when a local cameraman went on the ice and tried to film the conversations between the coach of Yekaterinburg and his wards.

This caused a sharp discontent of the guests.

One of them tried to prevent him by closing the lens with a stick, the second blocked his view.

But the Frenchman reacted most harshly.

He not only yelled at the TV man, but also pushed him away.

“Get out of here… This is not normal,” Da Costa said in Russian.

Subsequently, the forward realized his mistake and apologized to the operator.

According to Da Costa, in a tense moment of confrontation, he gave vent to emotions.

“We really wanted to save ourselves in the last minute, I was annoyed because we were behind in the score.

On the other hand, it was not entirely clear to me whether a person could drive up so close to the team during an important time-out.

Therefore, this situation occurred, for which I apologize again, ”Match TV quotes Da Costa.

And although later the general director of Amur, Roman Kramar, accepted the athlete’s apology and considered the incident settled, the league drew attention to the Frenchman’s inappropriate behavior and promised to give him a warning.

True, Da Costa himself reacted quite originally to this verdict.

Two days later, he again went on the ice against the Khabarovsk team and scored the winning goal (4:2).

Anatoly Golyshev acted as an assistant, thanks to which he set the Avtomobilist club record for assists (134).