Ilya Vorobyov reduced melting – Newspaper Kommersant No. 57 (7502) dated 04/04/2023

Metallurg Magnitogorsk announced the termination of the contract by agreement of the parties with head coach Ilya Vorobyov. The reason for the resignation was the unsuccessful performance of the team in the playoffs of the Fonbet Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Also, the first vice-president of the Ural club Sergey Laskov left his post. Andrey Razin, former coach of Severstal, will most likely become the new mentor of Magnitogorsk.

One of the giants of the KHL – “Metallurg” – made a difficult decision breake down with the head coach Ilya Vorobyov, who did a lot for the club and, despite his rather young age, and now the specialist is 48 years old, has become an iconic figure for him, like Valery Postnikov or Valery Belousov used to be. It is no coincidence that, like them, Vorobyov entered the “Magnitogorsk River” at least twice. Actually, in terms of the number of victories won – 258 in 442 matches – he is second only to Belousov (332 in 509).

In total, Vorobyov played 728 matches in the Metallurg system.

With him, Magnitogorsk won the Gagarin Cup in the 2015/16 season and played in the final twice, and he also took this trophy as an assistant to the famous Canadian Mike Keenen.

Ilya Vorobyov was incredibly close to triumph last season, after his second coming to Metallurg, before which he had worked with SKA and the Russian national team. Indeed, in the decisive series with CSKA, the Urals were 3-1 and lost the advantage in the fifth match at home, losing in overtime, and then gave up the cup. They had very high hopes for this season and practically retained the line-up, which included still strong legionnaires – goalkeeper Edward Pasquale and defender Cody Curran. With the same Pasquale and such a second number as Vasily Koshechkin, it seemed that the goalkeeper team of Metallurg would simply have no equal in the KHL. In addition, during the regular season, one of the leaders of the defense Grigory Dronov returned, who made an attempt to break into the National Hockey League.

But such a playing team with a rather cool selection of performers cursed the whole season and finished the regular season only in fifth place in the Eastern Conference, which a priori doomed itself to a difficult playoff.

It was striking that Vorobyov’s wards did not have last year’s courage, and the Canadian trio of strikers Brendan Leipsik-Philippe Maye-Josh Curry noticeably lost compared to the previous championship. However, such claims could be made not only to these hockey players. For example, such a bright striker as Nikolai Goldobin scored only 38 points in the “goal plus pass” system in 70 meetings of the season.

Nevertheless, the starting series of play-offs with the powerful “Avtomobilist” was pulled out by Magnitogorsk, putting the squeeze on the opponent in the overtime of the seventh match, although in the third period they were burning 1:3. But this confrontation took a lot of strength, and they were no longer enough for Avangard. Yes, in three matches Metallurg lost to Omsk only by one goal and twice only in overtime, but the result of the series turned out to be an absolute failure for such an ambitious club – 0:4.

The season ended too quickly for the Urals, and it was obvious that organizational conclusions were inevitable.

With all due respect and even love from Magnitogorsk to Vorobyov, he was dismissed. Responsible for unsatisfactory sports results and the first vice-president of “Metallurg” Sergei Laskov, who also left your post. It is already known that Alexei Zhloba will take his place.

As for Vorobyov’s successor, Andrei Razin, who has long attracted attention as an interesting and promising specialist, is considered the main candidate for the position of head coach. His Severstal, with a minimal budget, went to the playoffs twice, and in the current Gagarin Cup they even beat CSKA pretty badly, dragging out the series to seven matches. There was information that Metallurg seems to be going to cut the budget, which this season was, according to “Sport-Express”, 800 million rubles, although, of course, not up to the level of Severstal (315 million rubles). So Razin’s invitation looks logical from this point of view. In addition, do not forget that he is also not a stranger to Magnitogorsk, for which he once played for several years.

Alexander Ilyin