With what approached the new season hockey club “Salavat Yulaev”

You definitely won’t be bored

What will be the new season for Salavat Yulaev? There is one sure answer to this question. The season will certainly be interesting. You definitely won’t be bored. “Salavat Yulaev” this year is so composed of continuous questions that unraveling the resulting crossword in itself will be an exciting activity, regardless of sports results. To what extent will the North American legionnaires, who are the suppliers of 90% of creativity, fit into our harsh reality? Will young people be able to consistently keep the bar that they themselves set this spring and partially demonstrated in the summer? Will the updated goalkeeping team of the team cope with the responsibility? Will the old-timers of the team, its backbone, be able to reach a new level?

The management of the club this time managed to gather in one team a lot of interesting players with great potential, who will be very interesting to watch personally. Whether they will end up as a combat-ready team depends now on the coaching staff of Salavat Yulaev. As far as they properly dispose of the human resource that has fallen into their hands, Salavat will be so successful in the new season. All that is today, “Salavat Yulaev” – is a huge potential, which is hidden in the ability to progress its players. How will Viktor Kozlov and his team help the yesterday’s reserve of the team to open up? How skillfully use the gaming capabilities of overseas beginners? Will it be possible to maintain the desired atmosphere within the team? Will the young coach cope with the psychological pressure that inevitably arises in Ufa from fans and journalists?

Perhaps I find it difficult to name the coach of a major club, whose fans are always waiting for victories and high results, who would have faced such an interesting and at the same time difficult task as the one that fell to the lot of the Ufa debutant Viktor Kozlov. Surely it would be easier and calmer for everyone if there was a venerable specialist at the helm of the team, whose capabilities and weaknesses are known to everyone. In this case, it is easier to strengthen certain areas of work with appropriate specialists. Well, in Ufa they are not looking for easy ways, here the head coach and the limits of his abilities are also a complete mystery. The more interesting.

Play nice hockey

What tasks on the shoulder “Salavat Yulaev” in the coming season? Even the general director of the club, Rinat Bashirov, at the pre-season press conference, could not unambiguously answer this question. Those questions that we have raised above are also of concern to him, so he suggested waiting with setting tasks until it becomes clear whether it was possible to immediately create a combat-ready team or it will take more time. On the one hand, Rinat Rashitovich’s doubts are purely humanly understandable. On the other hand, the question of the tasks for the season is not so much a desire to find out what the team plans to fight for, but a litmus of the leadership’s confidence in the work they have done. Usually hockey bosses do not show doubts and talk about the highest goals (if we are talking about top clubs) or feasible horizons (for everyone else). Even the leadership of the Khabarovsk “Amur” declares its desire for the Gagarin Cup and announces specific dates.

The current general director of the Ufa club is not like his colleagues and predecessors. He jokes a lot (not always clear), can call a spade a spade, and rarely makes promises. He is more of a politician than a typical hockey functionary. Competent politicians do not make specific promises, so that later they will not be caught for their tongue. Therefore, one should not take literally the words of Bashirov that the task of “Salavat” is just to play beautiful hockey. The team and the coaching staff are likely to have more specific criteria for the success of the next season than it is voiced in public.

If you want my opinion, the new “Salavat Yulaev” in terms of its potential is able to become on a par with the strongest teams in the league. The team has almost everything for this and even a little more. If rookie Josh Ho-Sang, who has the talent of the level of Linus Omark, really plays like his Swedish colleague, analogies with which appear in anyone who watches the game of a black Canadian for at least a couple of seconds, then it is realistic to build a new strongest link in the league around him. At the same time, the coaching staff will have enough resources so that this link does not remain the only significant striking force of the team. If the young players continue to consistently give the team a lot of energy and take over the game. If those snipers who are counted on in this capacity will score. If Viktor Kozlov manages to keep with all this the basis of the tactical model of his predecessor, in which the same defenders knew their duties and coped with them quite well. Of course, all advances to the team are based on solid “ifs”, but there is no other way now. What will come of this, only the starting season will show.

puck route

What are the weak points of this “Salavat”? The question also does not belong to the category of simple ones, since it is extremely difficult to determine from the pre-season what will be the weak point of the team, and what simply needs to be improved during the season. Simply put, the “Yulaevites” are approaching the season too raw in order to determine in advance really systemic problems. But let’s try.

Today, the main concern is the game of the special teams of the majority. Of course, it can be objected that it is precisely the drawing of the majority that requires time to coordinate the composition and refine the implementation schemes. This is true. But “Yulaev’s” majority in the preseason was so terrifying that the team looked much more dangerous in equal compositions. Fans even began to bitterly joke that the referees are suing the “greens”, removing their rivals. For eight pre-season matches, the Ufa team sold four times too much. At the same time, the “Yulaevites” “ran” this summer, which, of course, is great, and regularly earned deletions on themselves. This could become Salavat’s most terrible weapon, don’t be so pathetic as the implementation of these fines. At first, it seemed that the creative legionnaires would just add to the Ufa majority of thought and variability against the backdrop of an unsuccessful game in unequal compositions in the playoffs. However, even the most skillful and creative players will not help if you let things take their course. In a positional attack, everyone must clearly know their maneuver and their role in the rally scheme.

You can’t do without a coaching hand, but in Salavat, it seems that there is simply no one to do this. Forward coach Konstantin Koltsov had simply monstrous performance in the majority at his previous place of work, and the head coach who shares this work with him in Salavat simply cannot do everything at once, and Viktor Kozlov himself was certainly not good at this last season direction. Majority schemes in “Salavat” are quite predictable and monotonous. The task of coaches is to come up with puck route, which will lead her to an unprotected section of the gate. The Ufa team does not show such a draw at all, it is not possible to confuse the opponent. We have to throw on accuracy, and with this just the performers of “Salavat” are not all right yet. His Mozyakin has not yet appeared in Ufa, and the coaching staff cannot think of anything else. It’s not about the quality of the players, although, of course, the puck could move faster, and there should be less marriage in reception and handling. They score in the majority and even make a bet on this team from the bottom of the table, in which the players of the level of the third link of “Salavat” are barely on the shock link. It’s all about the training of the brigade and the viability of coaching schemes.

Lack of attention

Nowadays, the coaching staff of a serious club is a large team of narrow specialists. Only the chief is responsible for general tasks, sometimes even his assistant. The rest have a limited area of ​​\u200b\u200bwork, which they must understand thoroughly. Combining duties happens, but this is already a step backwards. Contrary to this trend, “Salavat Yulaev” this season reduced by one specialist even his small coaching staff of the main team a year ago. No one in Ufa specifically deals with special teams, there is no one to work individually with players on throw-ins or power skating. No one is personally responsible for the progress of youth. This is very convenient only when you need to be responsible for poor results – no one is specifically to blame for anything, when responsibility is spread between coaches. Moreover, the head coach should not be responsible for the overall work and at the same time put the majority, as Viktor Kozlov does. Surely one thing will suffer from a lack of attention. The modern head coach is a strategist on the hill, watching from the sidelines as his team of specialists executes the planned front of work, and not a hard worker in the thick of things. The observation horizon is not the same. For some reason, Viktor Nikolayevich is sure that he will cope with all the variety of tasks – and we have already figured out above that the tasks this time are very difficult – with a small team. From the outside, it seems that this team definitely lacks a specialist in the majority, at least. A mentor on the “point” to young centers like Danil Alalykin would not hurt either.

Another problem that can overtake the Ufa team is the goalkeeper. In general, the Salavat goalkeeper team had a good pre-season and is not an obvious weak point of the team, but we could not help but notice that Andrei Kareev showed a good game on courage, and Ilya Yezhov is a fairly old goalkeeper who will not jump above his current standards. How will Kareev show himself in the long run, where players sometimes lack strong emotions? Most successful goalkeepers are not courageous, but extremely calm guys who do not need incentives. Andrey showed himself to be an emotional goalkeeper, and this is neither good nor bad. It’s just a factor that can’t be ignored. The season is long and it is impossible to constantly get out of yourself. So not for long to burn out emotionally and crumble. In this case, “Salavat” will be left without the first goalkeeper, since Ilya Yezhov, with all due respect to him, is able to help out at a difficult moment, but to go with him for the Cup is not an idea.

The Last Frontier

In the place of the leadership of the Ufa club, I would not be in a hurry to fill all the foreign vacancies in the team, leaving one place for an emergency situation at the last frontier. Even if I blow on the water and no failure occurs, having such a possibility in mind is at least a fairly far-sighted move.

As for the other legionary vacancy, it should probably be given to the defender. Yes, everyone would like to see another bright hockey player ahead, so that the power of the Ufa attack was obvious to everyone, but, on mature reflection, a reliable defender of “Salavat” is now needed. The Bashkir team has only seven defense players on one-way contracts, Shakir Mukhamadullin, who has yet to prove that he can play more consistently than last season, and 18-year-old Yaroslav Tsulygin. Behind them are only three people from Toros, whose capabilities were more or less tested at the training camp of the main team. The reserve is not to say that it is large, but no one is insured against injuries, illnesses and disqualifications. Cases similar to last year, when under the caterpillars “Tractor” had to throw in the playoffs completely unfired Sasha Komarov, should be avoided. Another experienced master in defense will definitely not be superfluous.

Summing up, what have we understood so far? Watching “Salavat” in the coming season will be very interesting anyway. If Viktor Kozlov’s coaching staff copes with their duties, then the team can compete for the highest places, but at the same time, the “Yulaevites” are not the team that is commonly called “without weaknesses”. By the season, the team is approaching rather damp and it is not worth expecting resounding success from it from the start of the championship. The coaching team still has a lot of work ahead of them.