CSKA and Ak Bars were eliminated after the opening round of the play-offs

On Friday, an amazing event happened in the Fonbet playoffs of the Kontinental Hockey League championship. After the opening round, both finalists of the previous championship were eliminated at the same time, losing their series in five matches. Last year’s Gagarin Cup winner CSKA lost to Lokomotiv, and Ak Bars to Avtomobilist.

The history of the KHL, which spans a little over a decade and a half, has seen all sorts of thunderous sensations. It also happened when a club that started the season as the winner of the Gagarin Cup quit the race already in the starting round of the play-offs. But still, what happened now looks like a completely extraordinary case for obvious reasons. Two finalists of the previous championship qualified simultaneously – and this is an unprecedented situation for the KHL. Both lost their series with a score of 1:4, that is, essentially devastating. And this despite the fact that in recent years, an extremely stable hierarchy seemed to have developed in the KHL.

And this despite the fact that before the season, CSKA and Ak Bars did not at all resemble clubs whose problems could undermine their stability.

On the contrary, many probably wanted to bet that they would meet again in the final. Both the Muscovites, for whom last year’s Gagarin Cup was the second in a row, and the Kazan team retained their coaches – Sergei Fedorov and Zinetula Bilyaletdinov – and the squads that ensured their takeoff. No, rather, they even strengthened them a little, but instead of a new takeoff, they experienced disasters.

The disasters are doubly loud because everything that happened to the hockey giants before them hinted that they might happen. To a lesser extent, this concerns Ak Bars, whose boring game in the regular season, of course, did not in any way correspond to its formal status and the sonority of the selection of players, but still ensured an advantage on their site at least in the first round. Another thing is that it turned out to be useless.

In the confrontation with Avtomobilist, who was similar in style, the Kazan team played only two more or less quality matches. In the fourth, already on the edge of the abyss after three misfires without a chance, they managed to convincingly defeat the Ekaterinburg team on the road, in the fifth, already on their own court, trying to further prolong the series, they played with them on equal terms. Everything in this meeting was decided by Avtomobilist’s attack in the final period and the goal of Semyon Kizimov, who was not closed on the spot, which brought the guests a win – 2:1.

But CSKA, with its excellent background, looked like a crisis club for the entire six months that the domestic hockey season lasted, even if there seemed to be no talk of any crisis, given its capabilities and resources.

But the fact is that in the regular season the army team constantly tumbled, constantly made breakdowns, finishing it amazingly low – in sixth position. In terms of stability, they and their opponent in the starting round of the playoffs, Lokomotiv, were not even close. And the series only confirmed that CSKA, which never emerged from its strange state, is not a competitor to the powerful Yaroslavl team. In the fifth match, the railway workers beat the Muscovites at home – 6:3, creating a colossal three-goal margin of safety by the middle of the first period.

Alexey Dospehov