The end of the regular season

On Wednesday, March 1, the next Gagarin Cup starts in the KHL.

The completed regular season of the Continental Hockey League became the longest in its history.

Previously, the teams played a maximum of 62 matches per season, but this time their number has increased to 68, which has contributed to updating a number of club achievements.

The record for the number of victories was set by Amur (30) and Sibir (38), as well as SKA, which for the first time took the upper hand in 50 meetings.

At the same time, the St. Petersburg army team fell short of the best result in the history of the KHL.

In the 2018/19 season, CSKA won 53 times.

Many teams have had very productive seasons.

So, Avangard, even in a meeting with Lokomotiv, overcame the bar of 180 goals and eventually set a new club record for goals scored (188).

Rewrote the achievement and CSKA, whose players upset the goalkeepers of opponents 214 times.

Moreover, the wards of Sergei Fedorov scored in all meetings of the regular season - and this is only the 13th such case in the history of the league.

Previously, this bar was not submitted to any convocation of the army.

The record holders for this indicator are SKA and Salavat Yulaev.

Since the founding of the KHL, they have done this in three different seasons.

However, the main intrigue of recent days concerned the struggle for access to the playoffs.

By this time, only four seats remained vacant - two each in the West and East.

True, there was practically no doubt about Severstal's participation in the Gagarin Cup.

The team had a comfortable advantage and guaranteed themselves a ticket eight days before the end of the championship.

Moreover, at the decisive moment, Spartak was beaten - a direct competitor for a place in the top 8.

It was this defeat that largely predetermined the fate of the last ticket from the West.

Subsequently, the red-whites lost to CSKA and fell behind Dynamo Minsk, for the first time since 2017 left out of the playoffs.

Belarusians, for the third time in a row, got the opportunity to test their strength in the knockout round, but it will be extremely difficult for them to go beyond the first round, because there they will face another confrontation with SKA (in the previous two, they won only one match out of nine).

In the East, everything also went without surprises.

Let the arrival of Alexei Volkov to the post of general manager helped Traktor hit the end of the championship, the club still remained outside the top eight.

The Chelyabinsk team even won back behind Neftekhimik and scored an equal number of points with them, but lost in regular time victories (23-25).

And now it is Nizhnekamsk residents who will have to pass the test of the conference leader in the face of Ak Bars.

Kazan still managed to overcome the crisis and completed the regular season for the sixth time as the leader of the East.

In the remaining pairs of the first round of the playoffs in the East, Salavat Yulaev - Admiral, Avangard - Sibir and Avtomobilist - Metallurg will play.

Interestingly, the paths of Omsk and Novosibirsk in the Gagarin Cup for the first and last time crossed ten years ago - and also at the start of the draw.

In the West, CSKA will compete with Severstal for reaching the conference semi-finals, Lokomotiv with Vityaz, and Torpedo with Dynamo Moscow.

Interestingly, in the first two cases, the teams never sorted out the relationship in the playoffs.

Nikishin's achievement and Yashkin's success

The winners of some individual awards were also determined.

So, for the first time in his career Dmitry Yashkin took the prizes for the best sniper and scorer.

The Czech of Russian origin only joined the SKA team in the summer, but immediately began to demonstrate phenomenal productivity and eventually scored 62 points, almost two-thirds of them in the form of abandoned goals.

A double in the match with Sochi allowed him not only to set a new personal record, but also to become only the second hockey player in the league to reach 40 goals in a season in the KHL.

Previously, only Metallurg legend Sergey Mozyakin managed to do this, who six years ago scored as many as 48 goals.

Also in the top three goalscorers of the season ended were Brooks Maysek (36) from Avtomobilist and Reed Boucher (31), who repeated the club achievement of Avangard belonging to Roman Cervenka.

It is noteworthy that Yashkin set the KHL anti-record for the number of points scored among the top scorers.

Since the founding of the league in 2008, the most productive hockey player has never scored less than 63 points for performance: in 2012, Alexander Radulov had that much, in 2018, Ilya Kovalchuk.

In the Russian Superleague last time Tomas Vlasak showed more modest results (53 in the 2002/03 season).

True, then the teams played 17 matches less.

Vladimir Tkachev from Avangard (59) and the same Radulov, who represents Ak Bars (57) and took a real spurt at the end of the season, fought to the last with Yashkin for leadership in the scorer race with Yashkin.

In the last ten meetings, he scored 15 (5 + 10) points and thanks to this he overtook Stefan Da Costa and Sergey Tolchinsky (both - 56 each).

In turn, the final stage of the championship failed Marat Khairullin.

The SKA forward was in first place for a long time, but scored only 4 (3 + 1) points in 12 games and dropped to tenth position (54).

It is curious that even Alexander Nikishin, who became one of the main newsmakers of the tournament, bypassed his teammate.

The 21-year-old native of Orel moved from Spartak to SKA in the summer of 2022 and immediately climbed to the top in two categories - as the most productive defender and the best assistant in the league.

Soldier 11 times hit the gates of opponents, and another 44 times helped partners do it.

Until now, not a single Russian defender has managed to reach the bar of 55 points for the regular season, and only Kevin Dallman (58) and Chris Lee (65) have done this among the legionnaires.

However, there is every reason to believe that if Nikita Gusev signed a contract with SKA a little earlier, the alignment of scorers in the race could be different.

After all, it was the Olympic champion Pyeongchang who became the only representative of the top 20 rating who scored noticeably more than one point per game (1.32).

And if he spent not 37, but at least fifty matches, it is likely that he would have outstripped even Yashkin.

One way or another, the striker once again confirmed his class and, along the way, overcame the mark of 500 points in the KHL.

In addition to him, this elite club includes five more: Sergey Mozyakin (928), Vadim Shipachyov (862), Danis Zaripov (685), Radulov (638) and Nigel Dawes (550).

The end of Zaripov's career

If a few weeks ago four people from this list continued to play in the KHL, now their number has been reduced to three.

At the end of the confrontation with his former team, Metallurg, the decision to hang up the skates was announced by Ak Bars forward Danis Zaripov, one of the most respected and titled hockey players in the country.

As part of Kazan and Magnitogorsk, he became the champion of the country six times (he won the Gagarin Cup five times), which no one else could do besides him.

In his farewell game, the 41-year-old Zaripov spent just under five and a half minutes on the ice and scored no goals or assists, but that didn't matter.

At the end of it, the fans greeted him with a deafening ovation, and Danis himself made a farewell speech, in which he expressed gratitude to everyone: from the fans and the management of Ak Bars to former partners and coaches.

Subsequently, Zaripov said that he transferred the role of Ak Bars captain to Radulov, and also announced his intention to help the team overcome a series of setbacks in the playoffs and win the main trophy again, albeit in a different status.

In turn, the head coach of Kazan Zinetula Bilyaletdinov and KHL President Alexei Morozov, who once played with him on the same line, made warm speeches to the attacker.

“I congratulate Danis on the end of a bright career that any hockey player would envy: five Gagarin Cups, three victories at the world championships, many individual awards.

We spent many years together in the same trio, getting incredible pleasure from the game and victories.

He has long been a true legend of Russian hockey and has earned this status through hard work, professional attitude and dedication to the game.

I am sure that Kazan fans will miss him on the ice, but there is no doubt: whatever Danis does after the end of his playing career, he will definitely succeed, ”the press service of the league quotes Morozov.

Nikolaev's record and Berdin's 61 saves

If the owners of individual awards among field players have already actually found their owners, then with goalkeepers everything is not so simple.

The name of the best will be known only during the closing ceremony of the championship, but there are already several contenders for this title.

One of them can safely be called Dmitry Nikolaev from SKA, who set a new record for the Petersburgers for victories in one regular season.

The Russian helped his partners take over in 30 matches and surpassed Robert Ash himself in this indicator.

At the same time, in the history of the league, only five goalkeepers brought success to their teams in a greater number of meetings.

The leader is Jakub Kovář (38), while the top also includes Karri Rämö and Janis Kalniņš (both 33 each), Vasily Koshechkin (32) and Vasily Demchenko (30).

Moreover, the Avangard goalkeeper achieved this in the current championship and can be considered one of Nikolaev's competitors.

Curiously, neither Nikolaev nor Demchenko are even in the top 5 in terms of the percentage of reflected shots.

Among the goalkeepers who played more than 20 meetings, Nikita Serebryakov from Admiral (94.4%) is in the lead, Maxim Dorozhko from Vityaz (94.1%) and Evgeny Alikin from Amur (93.7%) are slightly behind.

At the same time, the goalkeeper of the Vladivostok team occupies the second place in terms of reliability coefficient (1.79), second only to the railwayman Daniil Isaev (1.60).

However, one of the main characters of the final segment of the championship was Mikhail Berdin.

It was his phenomenal performance that helped Sochi break the resistance of Neftekhimik, and he himself became only the third goalkeeper to make at least 61 saves in a winning match.

Previously, only Andrey Kareev (61) and Juha Metsola (62) could boast of such.

But it is unlikely that the goalkeeper of the worst team in the KHL regular season, who has played only 19 meetings, will be able to claim the award.