Ak Bars defeated Avtomobilist with a score of 5:0

In the main match of the next day of the starting round of the Fonbet play-offs of the KHL championship, one of its favorites, Kazan Ak Bars, which was on the verge of relegation after three consecutive defeats from Avtomobilist, managed to defeat the opponent on the road – 5:0.

If the Yekaterinburg match could be taken out of context, as if with tongs, and imagined that it was they who opened the series, it would seem like an absolutely routine event, not remarkable at all from any point of view. Two clubs played, similar in style, betting on strength rather than lightness. But, naturally, the one with the brighter track record (and it included last year’s entry into the final of the Gagarin Cup) and personnel potential took the upper hand. Well, Alexander Radulov, Vadim Shipachev, Vyacheslav Voynov, Dmitry Yashkin, Evgeny Svechnikov, people with experience in the NHL, major international tournaments, winners of all sorts of valuable individual KHL prizes, should cope with Avtomobilist.

But forceps to carry out such operations have not yet been invented. And rigidly built into the context, this match and its outcome turned into an unconditional event, in fact, into a sensation.

The fact is that “Ak Bars” in front of him, it seems, even those who love him selflessly and passionately, almost blindly, managed to bury him. But in this case, even a blind man could not help but see how bad everything was for the Kazan grandee.

Three matches – three defeats. Each is a good, detailed illustration on the topic of poor preparation for the playoffs, although it seems unthinkable to think that such a seasoned coach as Zinetula Bilyaletdinov could miscalculate it. But the facts and pictures insist. The game in attack is so boring and simple – with a minimum of extraordinary moves, with the defenders’ connections reduced to almost zero – that the meager harvest of two goals scored in these three meetings does not seem like a shortage: they worked for it. The defense, Kazan’s strong point, is also not very strong. The leaders are silent, and Radulov, for example, is remembered only by his removal for a very dirty power move in the second game, followed by disqualification. A hopeless team, no matter how strange it may sound when applied to Ak Bars.

And suddenly, in the fourth match, being on the edge of an abyss, already falling into it, he suddenly appeared as a completely different “Ak Bars” – “Ak Bars”, completely corresponding to the ideas about his capabilities, about what Bilyaletdinov put into his concept. “Avtomobilist”, tormented by injuries to its leading players, was finally able to put up a fighting option – with Stefan Da Costa and Nick Ebert. But this did not help him at all, because, while retaining the taste for caution and accuracy, the Kazan team added new components to them. Well, let’s say segments of possession and pressure. And also – not a rough, but a tough fight. And also – sharp attacks at other people’s losses. And also those same connections from the defenders that resulted in Dmitry Yudin’s double.

This Ak Bars, as if it had been urgently repaired, was all good. And the striking forces that constantly annoyed Avtomobilist with their openings and introductions into the patch were Radulov, Yashkin, Shipachev, and hockey players of the second kind, such as Semyon Koshelev and Nikita Dynyak who hit the Yekaterinburg gate. And this time he did not hesitate, immediately playing in the favorite mode, immediately scoring two goals and forcing the hosts to change the goalkeeper. And then he ideally acted “according to the score” – without unnecessary risk, but also without praying for the gained advantage, which eventually grew to a very large one and apparently forced even those who no longer believed in the possibility to slightly reconsider their views on the situation in the series Kazan salvation. To make it even a little more real, Ak Bars now needs to win the fifth match on their site on Friday.

Alexey Dospehov