Stanka Razin: Metallurg wins even without a head coach

The first month of the KHL regular season brought a lot of surprises. Magnitogorsk Metallurg won three matches after the dismissal of head coach Andrei Razin and retained the lead, but it is already being overtaken by Lokomotiv and CSKA with a series of ten victories. Meanwhile, Olympic champion Nikita Gusev unexpectedly moved to Sochi, and modest clubs are crowding favorites.

Metallurg and Razin

When Metallurg suspended Andrei Razin from his duties as head coach at the beginning of last week, it shocked the hockey public. The removal from the position of coach of the team leading in the regular season has not been practiced by KHL clubs for quite some time. The previous time this happened was in the fall of 2012, when SKA St. Petersburg fired Milos Rzhiga in a similar situation.

However, Magnitogorsk still hasn't completely fired Razin. He has only been suspended, and the team is led by his staff, headed by his closest aide, Vladimir Vorobyov. The 53-year-old specialist was suspended after a 2-5 home defeat to Admiral Vladivostok. But it was only the fourth loss in the first 13 matches of the season.

And he did not prevent the Ural team from maintaining leadership in the Eastern Conference and the entire regular season. However, during September there were already symptoms of an unhealthy situation within the team. Razin left out Metallurg captain Egor Yakovlev several times, and also reduced playing time for key striker Vladimir Tkachev.

The coach's speeches at press conferences caused a resonance in the media, where he reacted sharply and harshly to questions about both hockey players. Videos from his briefings broke all social media viewing records in the first half of autumn.

Rumors of a conflict between Razin and Yakovlev have been going on since the fall of 2023, when Andrei Vladimirovich spent his first season at the head of the team. Then it did not prevent us from winning the Gagarin Cup. But last offseason, there was an incident with the selection of the captain. Razin preferred to appoint Vladislav Provolnev, a newcomer to the club.

But the management suggested giving the team the right to make a choice. And she preferred Yakovlev, who is the most respected and titled player of Magnitogorsk — in his career he had the gold of the 2014 World Championship in Minsk, the gold of the 2018 Olympics in Korea and two victories in the Gagarin Cup (in 2017 with SKA and in 2024 with Metallurg).

As a result, after the defeat from Admiral, the management announced the dismissal of the head coach. In a statement to the club's official website, the club explained that Razin had not been permanently dismissed, but confirmed the fact that the specialist had disagreed with a number of hockey players and stressed that he had considered the option of exchanging them to other teams, but the transfers had failed.

So far, without Razin, Metallurg has won three out of three matches, including defeating the very strong Ufa Salavat Yulaev at home with a score of 7:1, and Yakovlev and Tkachev get maximum playing time. Tkachev's performance has increased dramatically. Acting head coach Vladimir Vorobyov has repeatedly stressed that he is constantly in touch with Razin.

The team leads in the East, seven points ahead of Nizhnekamsk Neftekhimik, which is in second place. However, the club from Tatarstan played one less match than Magnitogorsk. If we take the general table of the regular season, then Lokomotiv Yaroslavl and CSKA Moscow are three points behind it.

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CSKA's winning streak

In the second season after returning to the post of head coach Igor Nikitin, the Army showed that they were already ready to fight for the Gagarin Cup, which they had not won since 2023.

Last season, the squad was not very suitable for the 53-year-old specialist's tough system hockey. The Red and blue had a very uneven regular season, and they were eliminated in the second round from Avangard Omsk in the playoffs. In the off-season, CSKA has improved significantly and has now significantly improved its results.

The current season for Nikitin's team began with three defeats in four opening matches. But then the army team won 10 victories in a row. In particular, they did not lose points during a difficult trip to the Far East, where they defeated Vladivostok Admiral (4:3B) and Khabarovsk Amur (2:0), who successfully spent the first month.

And the most striking game was the home army derby against St. Petersburg SKA, won with a score of 6:5. These successes allow CSKA to go to the top of the Western Conference table, sharing the lead with the winner of the two previous Gagarin Cups, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.

Sochi and Gusev

It's hard to remember when one of the KHL's outsiders managed to sign such a star as the author of the most important goal in the 2018 Olympic Final against Germany. Nikita Gusev saved the Russian national team from disaster by equalizing the score in the last minute, and Kirill Kaprizov scored the winning goal (4-3) in overtime.

Since then, the 2017 Gagarin Cup winner with SKA has managed to travel to the NHL, return to St. Petersburg, and in 2023 moved to Dynamo Moscow, where he was the leader and most productive player for two seasons. But last season Gusev abruptly lost.

And after the change of the blue and white coaching staff, the question arose about his future. The management and head coach Leonid Tambiev said they did not rule out signing a new contract with Nikita. However, according to Sport-Express, the parties did not agree on financial terms.

It was expected that the 34-year-old hockey player would find options with other top clubs. There are still differing versions of why this failed. Some believe that the player did not want to leave Moscow, others believe that some major teams did not have a place under the salary cap, while others had coaches who did not see Gusev in their schemes.

Anyway, in early October, he signed up for Sochi. This club has not reached the playoffs since 2019, but in recent years, long before the end of the regular season, it has lost its chances to participate in the Gagarin Cup and has constantly experienced financial problems.

Sochi has won only three of its 14 matches this season. The southern team is in the penultimate place in the West and is 10 points behind the playoff zone. Gusev played four games. So far, he has scored zero goals, but three assists. With him, the first three meetings were lost, but at the beginning of this week they managed to beat Ak Bars Kazan (3:2).

It is also worth noting the termination of the contract between Novosibirsk "Siberia" and the star striker Evgeny Kuznetsov. He only stayed at the club for two months. Officially, his departure is related to family circumstances.

Siberia had a bad start to the season, but in recent matches they managed to get into the playoff zone of the East, where Avangard Omsk, one of the richest clubs in the KHL, is sensationally absent. But Nizhnekamsk Neftekhimik and Khabarovsk Amur, which have small budgets, are in the top 4 of the conference. Not far from them, in fifth place, is Astana's Barys, which has not reached the playoffs since 2022 and has recently lost its chances of getting there long before the end of the regular season.

In the West, the same sensations are still being created by Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo and Cherepovets Severstal, which occupy the third and fourth places, respectively. SKA St. Petersburg and Dynamo Moscow, who seem to be favorites, are on the border of the playoff zone.