Those are still heroes

The start of the season for the hockey team was not set, but the awards were already awarded

When there is nothing special to brag, you need to figure out what to reward yourself. The new prize was called the Hockey Heroes and decided that the laureates of the year should give prizes on the eve of the departure of the national team to Finland to the quarry Cup. The absurdity of the situation was not only that the main laureates represented by the forwards of Nikita Gusev and Alexander Ovechkin, as well as the goalkeeper Andrei Vasilevsky, play behind the ocean and, of course, cannot be present at such a significant event, but also that a number of nominations are “Debut in the national team”, “My country of Russia” - it seems that he came up with “on. knee ”, for encouraging an advance, for growth. It could not cause anything but bewilderment.

Perhaps that is why the award was carried out quietly in Novogorsk, and not after the home stage of the Eurotour-under the curtain of the year and in a more solemn setting. Well, the fact that the national team with new laureates in Helsinki returned on the shield confirmed the old truth: the horses do not put the cart ahead.

The beginning of the season for the country's main team is strange. Starting with the fact that he was taking her to Helsinki, the head coach who risked being dismissed without a single match. Alexei Kudashov, being an assistant to the head coach of the St. Petersburg SKA and the Russian national team Ilya Vorobyov, after sending the latter to resign and, according to the new trend, the appointment in the summer received to both positions.

Why only the SKA mentor can be the head coach of the national team, you should ask the chief ideologist of Russian hockey, holding high posts in SKA, KHL, FHR and the Russian national team, Roman Rotenberg.

Roman Borisovich, in addition to the undeserved brand “Red Machine”, introduced a lot of things with about the same success. Today, it was immediately overtaken and with a bet on the base club for the national club.

The fact that the national team is headed by an authoritative specialist working in the club with the largest number of candidates in the main team of the country, there was at least some, albeit perverted and old-regime, but logic. The idea took shape under Oleg Znarka, showed its failure with Vorobyov, who replaced it, and already completely ridiculous to look at Kudashov. If we follow the old new tradition, then the national team was to be given at least in their hands to the chief coach of CSKA Igor Nikitin-the Moscow army and the Gagarin Cup took, and the championship was somehow miraculously preserved, that is, they remained basic club No. 2. But the real chiefs of Russian hockey have other priorities and special systematicity.

Last recently, almost all SKA leaders with the new main one entered the season with a team, traditionally equipped with the eyeballs, but quite average in skill, with problems in all lines. Such a situation is now - almost the entire color of Russian hockey plays the ocean, and those who can be taken from other clubs (SKA continues to do this shamelessly and impunity) - by no means the stars, they will not play on their own. Kudashov in the club quickly became not up to thoughts about the national team, and in October, everything went to the fact that it would have to be added to the authority - the once omnipotent St. Petersburg monster began to lose to everyone in a row.

If Kudashov had been fired from SKA for 13 (!) Defeats (the former mentors sometimes threw out for significantly smaller sins), no one would be surprised.

But then it would be necessary to dismiss him to a heap from the team, to whose leadership he had not yet managed to begin. It would probably be a rarest case in the history of sports, but even Roman Borisovich Rotenberg did not dare to laugh at the whole hockey world. But he decided on another, as the head of the headquarters of the national team, having adjusted the composition under the strategic idea with an aim already at the Olympics-2022.

Alexei Kudashov had to go debuted with a team without a single star and, in general, almost without proven victorious Olympiad 2018 and the world of players (from the Olympic champions playing in Russia, was the only one defender Artem Toor). Of course, it was still explained to journalists in Novogorsk that everything is going according to plan, that there are no random people in the team, that all invited are the leaders of their clubs, but no matter how much the second composition was praised, he will not be the first to be from this. From SKA and CSKA, by the way, the leaders also went, but in all, representatives of ten teams were in the national team, which is a record of recent years.

Of course, it is possible to experiment, of course, the low status of Eurotour allows this - if the situation is quite stable. In the absence of stability, starting with a total experiment looked reckless.

If the new head coach has not yet coped with the second in composition to the club, then how will he cope with the young motley company? What will it rely on?

In Helsinki, it quickly became clear that there was nothing to rely on and no one. Everyone tried, but could not. One victory tricked over the Swedes, two defeats from the Finnish and Czech teams, two points and third place. The result is extremely weak, but this is half a bastard. The new-bores did not help out the newborn at the decisive moments, the defenders fired, there were few in the attack of the creative, its almost complete absence-the central attackers, with whom in our hockey there have long been a disaster.

In the best case, the Russians dominated the segments, in the game on an equal footing were passed, they were necessarily blown away at the endings, in the final match with the Czechs lost, they looked dull and boring at all. It was strongly impossible to see what new ideas were brought by the coaching staff, and “invaluable international experience” is not useless only if it is from this composition, in which only two or three hockey players can be noted.

Who is about what, and the head of the national staff of the national team is always repeating about the future Olympics, which, "we can say, already on the nose." And adds:

“We have 50 candidates for the team - we check them to understand who will go to China to protect the title of Olympic champions for Russia.”

A little earlier, Rotenberg Jr. explained that the prospect of the absence of NHL players in Beijing is very real, and the composition of the Olympic team-2022 can be the same as now in Helsinki. Obviously, bearing in mind that in two years, there will be no stars in Russia at all - everyone will be behind the ocean, so you need to urgently play those who definitely will not leave. For this matter, the combat -ready forces from the best remaining will again have to be collected in SKA - the result of an unsuccessful experiment in Helsinki worked on the need for further strengthening the club, the head coach of which should not be from a sheet, but every day to work with the future Olympic composition. At the same time, of course, SKA will return to the top.

If this is a systematicity, then I do not envy our hockey. Yes, the “unknown” national team of Finland in the spring in Slovakia became the world champion, having beaten the consistently starry overseas Swedes, Russians and Canadians.

But we are not Finns. And certainly not yet heroes.