Continental hockey anomaly
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The current holder of the Gagarin Cup CSKA again reached the final of the play-off “Fonbet” of the KHL championship. In the semi-final series, he performed the usual trick, beating his most principled rival, SKA, for the sixth time in a row. This time the Muscovites took over the Petersburgers with a score of 4:2. They finished the series with a very confident 3-0 victory in the sixth match at home.
The result of this semi-final of the Gagarin Cup, it seems, finally confirmed the existence of an amazing phenomenon in it, an indisputable anomaly that cannot be explained by any rational factors that immediately come to mind. In the middle of the last decade, CSKA and SKA turned into giants of the KHL, into giants with a special status, special opportunities.
Since then, their playoff clash in the Western Conference Finals has become something of a constant, a must-see attraction of the season.
Without it, this exciting attraction, only two championships managed: in 2017, the fight between two army teams was disrupted by Yaroslavl Lokomotiv, who knocked out Moscow in the quarterfinals, in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic, which erased the end of the championship. In the rest, they, two domestic hockey monsters, always intersected.
And the results of these intersections, in theory, equal in every sense – ambitions, available resources – clubs look fantastic. In the very first of those that happened precisely in the cup semi-finals, that is, after Muscovites and St. Petersburg gained their exclusive status, in 2015, SKA took over. But after that, success came exclusively to CSKA. He got it in different ways and ways – convincingly and hanging in the series by a thin thread, but he got it. And this victory was for him for the sixth in a row. Sixth! Incredible in fact, the figure, given the external fluctuation of the alignment.
And actual circumstances add magic to it. The fact is that now they were clearly in favor of the SKA. In this series, he, the winner of the regular season, had the advantage of his court and should have had an advantage in freshness. Huge advantage.
It was the Petersburgers who routinely marched to the semi-finals along the red carpet, while the Muscovites unexpectedly suffered in the previous rounds with Severstal and Lokomotiv.
And they had to play seven matches with both opponents – a monstrous load. But nothing SKA helped.
The complexity of the situation in which he yielding 2:3, found himself before the sixth match, demanded, as it turned out, from his coach Roman Rotenberg the same, apparently, difficult decisions, and the Petersburgers entered this meeting without Igor Ozhiganov, who seems to be indispensable as a defender with playmaker functionality, and without the main goalkeeper Dmitry Nikolaev. It took the Muscovites only 13 seconds to break through his understudy Vladislav Podyapolsky – they separated the puck into the game in the central circle from the throw of Nikita Nesterov and the deft movement of the stick of Maxim Sorkin standing in front of Podyapolsky, who corrected the trajectory of the puck in the air so that the goalkeeper remained at affairs. CSKA took the lead thanks to a decision not complicated, but simple, one of those that, as a rule, bring much more benefit in the playoffs.
And then the mood of the SKA hockey players should have only deteriorated. Because of the too toothless game in the majority after the removal of Vladislav Kamenev – a couple of sensible draws in two minutes, not a single really dangerous throw. Due to the fact that, in terms of numerical equality, the Petersburgers, in principle, did a lot of things correctly – they lined up good attacks, sometimes resulting in a shot on touch, tried to value the puck, but for some reason all their moves were easily read by their rivals, as if they knew in advance from what point it would be a shot was fired on touch, and reliably blocking it. Due to the fact that it was not the diligent, trying to put pressure on SKA, but the outwardly a little inert CSKA, there were not bad moments, like the one in which Sorkin, who had run away from Stepan Falkovsky, almost again hit someone else’s goal. This time, Podyapolsky’s shield still touched the puck.
Those who were worried about SKA, those who wanted this confrontation to stretch to the maximum distance, certainly cheered up after the break, seeing that CSKA spends a lot of time in their zone. Those who worried about the Muscovites and did not want the seventh match, probably laughed at the premature enthusiasm.
After all, this is one of the chips of the current CSKA – from time to time, supposedly like this, “sagging”, in fact, not allowing anything to the enemy, but simply luring him into a trap, inside which a tight spring is compressed until redistribution.
She straightened up for the first time when the hosts got the opportunity to play in the majority. The pattern of their combination after the interception at the blue line was flawless: several passes – and Mikhail Grigorenko found himself with the puck in front of an empty corner, where Podyapolsky desperately flew. Grigorenko, in fact, flashed the goalkeeper with his shot, but, slipping under him, the puck hit the stand that saved SKA.
And then this spring straightened again. Sergey Plotnikov and Konstantin Okulov – each of the two army forwards performed a signature trick: Plotnikov gave a pass from the side, from the fight. Okulov, having taken him on the spot, dealt with the unfortunate Podyapolsky in a style that made one recall the most technical strikers in the history of Russian hockey – Valery Kharlamov, Sergey Makarov, Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeny Malkin. The feint, furious in refinement, laid the goalkeeper on the ice, and it is not difficult to guess what he felt, looking at how his opponent, who had gone around him, puts the puck into the target wide open with precise movements – despair of such a degree that there is no higher.
This CSKA was, of course, unstoppable. In the final period, he, using the numerical advantage thanks to Darren Dietz, moved SKA to such a distance that one could no longer dream of a pursuit. Muscovites reached the final of the Gagarin Cup. In it, they will meet with Kazan’s Ak Bars, who have dealt with Avangard at the semifinal stage.
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