Very flat ice

Boring, gentlemen. Almost all stars - in North America, and the current Gagarin Cup draw is without sensations

If the Gagarin Cup wins CSKA or Ak Bars, which is less likely, then the current draw will not be called the “cosmos”. We fly low, along a too predictable trajectory. This was not expected from the season, not at all.

The optimists believed that the hard ceiling of salaries finally equalizes the chances of the participants, and the deliberate superiority of the richest willing into oblivion. Nothing of the kind - who was under the resource, he remained with him, small violations of subordination did not have much importance. The play-off only confirmed that in any pair and at any stage the team with higher sowing should win. After the quarterfinals in the Western and Eastern conferences, the game remained in the game four best clubs following the results of the regular championship, after the semi -finals - two, who took first and second places, so they find out relations in conferences. The St. Petersburg SKA and CSKA generally converge for the fifth time in six years - there should be no other teams in the final of the West.

Moreover, only one series of playoffs-2021 demanded the holding of all seven matches, and the rest in the vast majority of cases ended with an early victory of favorites. In the “West” the role of the outrageous of calm was taken by the Yaroslavl “Lokomotiv”, who gave the battle of CSKA - the young and ambitious team of Andrei Skabelka was enough for six matches, but the seventh was lost honestly.

It is curious that the losers of three of the four semi-final series began rivalry with victories on other people's venues, but neither the metropolitan “Dynamo”, nor the “Lokomotiv”, nor the “Magnitogorsk” could really develop success. Dynamo was too depended on the game of the first link Yashkin - Shipachev -Kagagarlitsky, and the injury of the latter greatly facilitated the life of the opponent in the person of SKA. Lokomotiv lasted the longest, but he simply did not have enough experience, the Magnitogorsk in a brilliant style won the first and fourth matches from the “avant -garde”, but the fifth and decisive sixth failed completely.

So at the level of conference finals, everything came to its too logical conclusion.

Three participants in the final series are the regulars of this stage of the draw, and the “avant -garde” at the end of the tenths reached the final, where CSKA was crushed devastated. Last year, the Gagarin Cup draw was interrupted after the first round due to the pandemic, Gold was given to CSKA as the winner of the regular championship, but the team of Igor Nikitin would most likely take the main prize.

Boring, gentlemen. Almost all the stars - in North America, in the National Hockey League of some Russian goalkeepers with a dozen, almost all - in sight. The stars of the second row raked the favorites, but young talents sleep and see themselves in the best league of the world, so that the fans barely have time to remember the names.

Not a very joyful picture of the draw was revived only by great veterans. As much as possible, and each in their own way sang their swan song by Pavel Datsyuk and Sergey Mozyakin, each appearance of which, respectively, in the “motorist” and “Magnitogorsk” returned fans during the times of smart and subtle hockey. Alas, the “motorist” got off the distance after the first round, the “Magnitogorsk” lasted a little longer.

The best scorer of domestic hockey in the entire history of March 40 years old is 40 years old. Four days earlier, Danis Zaripov exceeded the same line, with whom Mozyakin in Magnitogorsk in the middle of the tenth was a brilliant duo of the forwards. Today, Mozyakin scored ten points for the effectiveness for two rounds for performance-the best indicator in Metallurg and one of the best among all participants in the draw. The head of the Cup Gagarin Zaripova, the head coach of Ak Bars, Dmitry Kvartalnov, kept the 5-fold (! But, as the course of the series with the Vanguard showed, Zaripov was not enough. About Ilya Kovalchuk, who invariably goes to the ice as part of the Vanguard, alas, this cannot be said.

So far, no one can say whether the great four will remain in the ranks for the next season. But who definitely will not be on the bench, is the patriarch of the Russian coaching workshop Vladimir Krikunov. “Vasilich” very worthy of working with the Moscow “Dynamo”, but the contract ends, the leadership is looking for a new head coach, but whether Oleg Znarok’s retired from Spartak will be, something is not known for the parties at the final stage of negotiations. It is unlikely that the reason is that Dynamo did not want to see the many -year -old ally Oleg Valerievich Haris Vitolins - as well as the fact that the authorities were not impressed by the work of the duet with Spartak. Of the current Russian experts, there is no more than a sign of no one, and the potential of the duet is far from exhausted.

The head coach of SKA and part -time head coach of the Russian national team Valery Bragin, the St. Petersburg, were hopelessly inferior to Moscow teammates and could lose the final series of the “West” to the very unpleasant situation. But SKA pulled the fourth match on his teeth, and the departure was temporarily postponed.

Knowing the customs of those who are now steaming Russian hockey, Valery Bragin can remove from both posts as easily as they were appointed to these positions. Oleg Znarok, Ilya Vorobyov and Alexei Kudashov, took a similar path in recent years. Bragin's position is no better than the younger predecessors, and even worse in something. The composition of SKA is far from championship, and the national team will have to be formed from what is at hand, that is, almost without NHL players.

So far, Valery Bragin, as he could, tried to save the final series with CSKA. After three defeats in a row, the fourth seemed inevitable, but Peter of the “cracker” would never have forgiven Valery Nikolaevich. It helped that CSKA slightly loosened the grip, and this was enough to change the fate, albeit temporary. It seemed that Muscovites have been more necessary for Muscovites - last year’s championship, drawn up according to the results of the regular championship, could not be considered complete. This is the second case with CSKA - the first was six years ago, when, in order of the experiment, it was decided to consider the winner of the regular championship the champion.

CSKA for today is the most systemic team of the continental hockey league, even in composition, who knows how to force any opponent to play in the rhythm she needs.

This is not very spectacular, but effective. At the same time, the malfunctions are possible that the Yaroslavl “Lokomotiv” proved, which was not inferior to the army team in militancy, and in his best matches, it looked even more diverse. And the current SKA in terms of spirituality, and by the experience of most hockey players, is still weak-as if not believed in the possibility of repetition of a Cambem of 6 years ago, then the mentor of the St. Petersburg team Vyacheslav Bykov. SKA was then inferior in the 0: 3 series, but managed to turn its move, win a series, and then take the Gagarin Cup.

On the course of the “eastern” final series, the dramatic situation with the captain of the “hawks”, the experienced defender Alexei Emelin, had an undoubted influence. The Vanguard veteran was injured in a collision with Artem Lukoyanov in the first match of the series, could not leave the ice on his own, but still finished the victorious meeting for Omsk. Emelin tried to accuse of simulation, but the “Simulyant” had to urgently hospitalize at night, and after a while sent on a reanimobile from Kazan to Moscow. All these days, combat operations at the media level developed in parallel. The message of the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan on the detection of Emelin's blood traces of narcotic substances caused a storm. A little later it became clear that one of the factors that caused the so -called toxic shock of the liver could become painkillers, which had to resort to help after an injury. Actually, it was already about the salvation of the 34-year-old defender-by the way, the former player of Ak Bars, who twice won the Gagarin Cup with the team. Fortunately, Alexei has already been transferred from resuscitation to a profile clinic, but from the negative background surrounding the series, it is so easy to get rid of.

As for the results directly, after two unexpected victories in Kazan, the house in Balashikha, where Omsks were based for the third year, the Vanguard suffered two defeats. In such a situation, Ak Bars usually does not miss the prey, clinging to the opponent with a dead grip. The style of the quarterly - acting simple, reliable and tough. His "brutal" hockey may like or not like it, but it is effective. And while everything goes to the fact that we are waiting for the repetition of the 2018 final CSKA-“Ak Bars”, in which Kazan residents easily coped with the opponent.

Today with intrigue in the playoffs is very bad. But there is still the hope that in the end, the teams will at least please.