Not a single “zero” team appeared in the Gagarin Cup-2023 draw

This has never happened before – until this season, of course! – so that in all, yes, in all eight (!) series of the Gagarin Cup, after two games, the score would be equal – 1:1. After the third matches, of course, in each pair someone came out ahead, but I personally would not risk almost anywhere to predict the outcome.

Well, except that I don’t believe in sensations in the series with the participation of the winners of the conferences: Western – SKA, well, Eastern – Ak Bars. So far, however, in the KHL – not like in the foreign NHL, or now also in our VHL (the Major Hockey League – the second-highest domestic division), where the 16th club of the regular season can knock out the first.

And yet, the so-called salary cap appears to be doing its job. Yes, there have been many talks about how, they say, in our conditions there will be craftsmen to bypass it (if it is possible to bypass the ceiling at all – but this is already a question for linguists), yes, there are not weak questions for the St. schools, yes, the division into conditionally rich and poor has not gone away …

But is anyone going to bet an apartment, even in New Moscow, on the victory of CSKA against the daring Cherepovets Severstal? Or at Salavat Yulaev, which also finished second in its conference, against Vladivostok, which has long been forgotten by the hockey gods, except for the fans of Ufa who are always faithful to the green-white-blue colors?

However, let’s talk about everything in order. And yet – with forecasts: it’s more interesting!

SKA (St. Petersburg) – Dynamo (Minsk) – series score 2:1

The blood of the best scorer of the regular season – the Czech, oddly enough, legionary – Dmitry Yashkin, was shed, the rest of the craftsmen from the St. Like, these Canadians play dirty (yes, there are a lot of overseas fighters in Minsk – although, of course, this cannot be compared with the ever-memorable Vityaz), but we should not be led by all this – we must answer with goals.

So far it’s been successful overall. And – honestly – as I said above, I have no doubts about the winner: I bet on SKA.

The fourth match is March 7th.

CSKA (Moscow) – Severstal (Cherepovets) – 1:2

If you give examples of Russian hockey heroism-2023, then looking at this pair. I won’t even mention budgets – let’s look at other numbers: the number of shots.

In the second match of the series “Seva”, as the Cherepovets team is called among its own, pulled out a victory in overtime, although the Moscow army team fired 52 rubber bullets at its gates. But – goalkeeper Alexander Samonov worked wonders!

In the third game, again victorious for the representatives of the glorious Vologda Oblast, the score on throws was again not in their favor – 19:43. And the score on goals, the most important one, is the opposite: Daniil Vovchenko, who, by the way, repeated the club record for goals in the playoffs (now there are 6 of them, like Mikhail Anisin and Evgeny Ketov), ​​with his double brought, in fact, a win to the Cherepovites – 5:3.

And yet, forgive me Andrei Razin and his fighters, I do not believe in their final success. At a distance, CSKA will squeeze them.

The fourth match is March 8th.

Lokomotiv (Yaroslavl) – Vityaz (Podolsk) – 2:1

To be honest, I don’t have much to say about this couple. Yes, the “Vityaz” of Vyacheslav Butsaev caught the victory in Yaroslavl (“zero”, as, in fact, already noted, this Gagarin Cup is not in this), but globally it is hardly ready to resist the “Locomotive” of Igor Nikitin: the image, albeit brave, but only a man with a club against an armored train is very indicative here.

Separately, let’s note Daniil Tesanov. On account of the 21-year-old overall striker – already 3 goals in the series (and for the entire regular season there was only one).

The fourth match is March 7th.

Torpedo (NN) – Dynamo (Moscow) – 1:2

“The main thing is to find the keys to Dynamo’s viscous defense!” – said the head coach of Nizhny Novgorod Igor Larionov. It’s weighty in a professorial way – but do the Torpedo players who aspired to an interesting and spectacular hockey in the “smooth” championship have an original solution to such a difficult task?

Honestly, life experience and rational arguments suggest that the pragmatic blue and white team of Alexei Kudashov will be the winner here. Although the alignment of forces is far from obvious: 51 to 49 in her favor, no matter how trite it sounds.

The fourth match is March 8th.

Ak Bars (Kazan) – Neftekhimik (Nizhnekamsk) – 2:1

Kirill Petrov from Kazan scored his 30th goal in the Gagarin Cup and thus became the tenth person in the history of the KHL to conquer this milestone. The first in the sniper rating is quite expected Sergey Valeryevich Mozyakin – 68 goals.

Well, talking about Ak Bars, one cannot fail to mention the brutal face of the team – Alexander Radulov. Naturally, he continues to score points in the Tatar derby, which he now has accumulated in the KHL playoffs as much as 93 (26 goals + 67 assists).

Will it get to 100 this season? I am sure of this no less than in the victory of the team of the seasoned Zinetula Bilyaletdinov in the series!

The fourth match is March 7th.

“Salavat Yulaev” (Ufa) – “Admiral” (Vladivostok) – 1:2

Is it worth saying once again that the main playoff sensation seems to be brewing in this pair? If not even in the entire history of the KHL, then definitely in recent seasons!

And the decisive factor, quite possibly, will be exactly the coaching cup experience. Leonid Tambiev (remember this Dynamo Riga forward?), who twice won the Petrov Cup in the VHL, has immeasurably more of it than the progressive, but not yet so beaten in terms of mentoring Viktor Kozlov (and this overall, but technical striker, enchanting in the NHL, you definitely did not forget).

And from the heading “a curious fact”: in the third game of the series for two teams – zero penalty minutes! This had only happened twice before in the Gagarin Cup: in 2009, Ak Bars and Lokomotiv, and also in 2014, in one of the matches of the final series between Metallurg Magnitogorsk and the Lev team, which then represented the Czech Republic. .

The fourth match is March 7th.

Avangard (Omsk) – Sibir (Novosibirsk) – 2:1

Let’s go back a few paragraphs, refresh your memory, if suddenly I have already overloaded you with numbers, etc. Vladimir Eduardovich Tkachev from Avangard practically repeated the thought of Roman Borisovich Rotenberg from SKA: Siberia, he said, is trying to provoke us, but we We respond to these provocations in the hockey way – with abandoned pucks.

Fortunately, Omsk citizens have someone to score. But the Novosibirsk battalions of Andrey Martemyanov, as we already discussed in MK, will definitely not surrender without a fight – so no one will be surprised at seven matches in this series.

The fourth match is March 8th.

Avtomobilist (Yekaterinburg) – Metallurg (Magnitogorsk) – 1:2

Here the layouts are similar – all 7 games are not excluded at all. And the approximate equality of forces is almost the same as in the West, in a pair of Dynamo – Torpedo: four overtimes in 3 matches is proof of this.

But still, the notorious cup experience, not excluding coaching (and here already – a reference to the Admiral and Salavat series), in theory, should play for Magnitogorsk. Ilya Petrovich Vorobyov not so long ago took the Gagarin Cup, if you suddenly forgot!

And I personally like the actions of individual “metallurgists” on the site. From the captain – defender Egor Yakovlev – and to Semyon Koshelev and Denis Zernov, who score wonderful goals …

The fourth match is March 8th.