The First Channel Hockey Cup starts in St. Petersburg

The Channel One Cup starts on Thursday in St. Petersburg. The traditional tournament will be attended by the national teams of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, as well as the “Stars and VHL” team, made up of young players from the Continental and All-Russian Hockey Leagues. The composition of the domestic national team, which will perform under the name “Russia 25,” will also be relatively young. The main intrigue of the tournament, apparently, will be its confrontation with the Belarusians, who unexpectedly won the Channel One Cup last year.

The complete international isolation of Russian hockey again did not prevent the holding of the Channel One Cup, which in its new format – without the usual rivals in the so-called Eurotour from Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic – will be held for the second time. Now the organizers of the tournament have even tried to diversify its competitive program by inviting, in addition to the national teams of Belarus and Kazakhstan, the Chinese ice team. But she refused, citing the fact that many of her hockey players are busy with the national championship, the calendar of which does not include a December break for national team matches. But according to information from the head coach of the Russians, Roman Rotenberg, this is the Ministry of Sports imposed a ban for the participation of the Chinese in the tournament.

As a result, it was decided to add the “Stars and VHL” team to the Channel One Cup, which, however, has no stars, since it consists of young and, to put it mildly, little-known players who have so far only conquered the All-Russian Hockey League or are taking their first steps in Continental. In addition, several guys, led by forward Matvey Michkov, drafted in the National Hockey League, who at least aspired to the status of rising stars, gradually dropped out of its lineup due to health reasons. It seems that in order for this team to partially live up to its name, striker Arseniy Gritsyuk, who managed to become a silver medalist at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, had to be transferred from the national team. On the other hand, experts believe that the “Stars and VHL” will in any case be stronger than the Chinese who did not arrive, who are still on the outskirts of world hockey.

However, it is clear that the struggle for the Channel One Cup will unfold between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and most likely will again come down to a Russian-Belarusian confrontation.

Moreover, the last tournament won Belarusians, who defeated the Russians in the decisive match – 5:4. Regular time and overtime then ended in a draw, and in the shootout, everything was decided by a goal from naturalized American Shane Prince. So now the Russian team has an additional incentive to rehabilitate itself for last year’s failure.

True, the current team is called “Russia 25”, which indicates a certain age limit. Indeed, it was initially assumed that players no older than 25 years old would be tested in it, but as a result the concept changed a little, and now the number 25 is the maximum average age of the team. Its head, Roman Rotenberg, also works as the head coach of SKA. And although the St. Petersburg army team is not the leader of the KHL in the current regular season, currently occupying fifth place in the Western Conference, they formed the backbone of the team for the Channel One Cup. Taking into account the coaching staff, which is entirely from St. Petersburg, in fact, we will see SKA, reinforced by several hockey players from nine clubs, including those who previously also played on the banks of the Neva.

In principle, this lineup could have been more interesting if, for example, the striking attacking trio from Spartak, which was simply tearing apart the KHL this season, had not fallen apart. But Ivan Morozov was out for a long time due to injury, and Nikolai Goldobin and Pavel Poryadin did not join the national team after the recent All-Star Game for reasons unknown to Roman Rotenberg. When communicating with journalists, the mentor found it difficult to explain their absence and advised them to contact the Spartak club for comments on this matter. Now it’s even difficult to guess which link can claim to be the leader. What looks interesting on paper is the combination of the top scorers of Torpedo and Traktor – Vasily Atanasov and Maxim Shabanov with Ak Bars center forward Ilya Safonov, which was played in training.

Alexander Ilyin