Mikhail Pashkin – goodbye: head coach of Khabarovsk SKA-Neftyanik resigned

The contract with the army coach, under whose leadership SKA scored a victorious hat-trick last season, was terminated

The fact that Mikhail Pashkin is no longer the head coach of SKA-Neftyanik, Khabarovsk, and not only Khabarovsk, probably, but the entire hockey community of the country has been buzzing for a week and a half. When this news first appeared online, many did not want to believe it. How so? Under the leadership of this mentor, last season the army team won the Russian Cup, the National Super Cup, and even won gold medals in the championship. Besides Pashkin came to SKA in 2022, and his contract is for three years. So they thought it was rumors.

However, today the club confirmed that everything is true. The contract with Mikhail Pashkin was terminated by agreement of the parties, the coach leaves the club. The most convincing reason is team performance at the Russian Cup. Frankly speaking, it was a disastrous performance when SKA barely jumped into the last playoff car, barely managing to reach the next round of the Cup. This is not at all what was expected from winner of three cups at once both fans and opponents.

“Due to the unsatisfactory level of training of the SKA-Neftyanik team and unsuccessful performance in the 2023 Russian Cup, the Club management and the team’s head coach Mikhail Pashkin decided to terminate the contract early. Mikhail Pashkin will lead the SKA-Neftyanik team in 2022. Under his leadership, the team successively won the Cup, Super Cup and Russian Championship, scoring the third golden hat-trick in its history. However, the current season “SKA-Neftyanik” started extremely unsuccessfully, unable to repeat the cup success, leaving the tournament distance already at the 1/4 finals stage. The hockey club “SKA-Neftyanik” thanks Mikhail Andreevich for the work done and wishes him success in his future career,” noted the HC “SKA-Neftyanik”.

The club also mentioned that the name of the new coach will be announced later. Well, let’s wait. Although two candidates are increasingly being discussed online – Dmitry Shchetinin and Ivan Maksimov, there are questions here that may prevent mentors from joining the Khabarovsk team. In fact, three candidates are being discussed, but as one of the fans noted: Yuryev will definitely not go to Khabarovsk under any circumstances. Well, as they say, we’ll wait and see.

In general, the Khabarovsk club has been unlucky with head coaches lately, or rather, mentors have been unlucky with the club. Despite their long-term contracts by hockey standards, they leave one after another. After the first departure of Mikhail Yuryev, in July 2020, SKA-Neftyanik was headed by Mikhail Sveshnikov for a very short time; by the way, he brought it with him to Khabarovsk “Finnish rocket” – Tuomasa Mäattäwhich still plays today.

Then, Sveshnikov unexpectedly leaves the team with the wording: “for family reasons.” And Ilyas Khandayev comes to his place in September 2020. However, already in April 2021, SKA changes its head coach again – Khandaev leaves the club, and Mikhail Yuryev returns to the team again. In March 2022 Yuryev leaves the club again, where he had previously worked faithfully for 9 years. It will be replaced in April 2022 by young and promising Mikhail Pashkinwho leaves “by agreement of the parties” in October 2023. Who is next?

Read also: Khabarovsk SKA-Neftyanik lost to Dynamo Moscow in the quarterfinals and dropped out of the fight for the Russian Cup. The match ended with a score that in this case can be called devastating – 5:1

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We remember who Mikhail Pashkin is, who became the head coach of Khabarovsk SKA-Neftyanik. In this post, Mikhail Pashkin replaced Mikhail Yuryev