From the very start of the Russian Championship, hockey fans and specialists have taken how long Novosibirsk “Siberia” will hold out in the leading group. The team is staffed by age players, and by the middle of a very busy season they may run out of steam. Izvestia made a rating of the main events of hockey September.
Team of the month
Until Monday, it was the Novosibirsk club, and not the Ak Bars champion, that was the potential leader of the Super League. In nine rounds, the team of Sergey Kotov suffered the least losses, and Siberians scored points in games not with outsiders, but with applicants for medals. At home, for example, Sibir beat the same Kazan, and away Moscow Dynamo, HC MVD and CSKA. And only in the match with Vityaz in Podolsk a misfire occurred. And the main loser of the month should be called not even the lagging teams, but the Moscow Army Club. CSKA did not win a single victory in September on its site, but at the same time it is in the middle of the elite echelon.
Player of the Month
In the absence of Evgeni Malkin, the captain of the Russian national team and Ak Bars Alexei Morozov reigns supreme today. In the matches played by him until Monday, the Kazan striker scored 11 goals (almost one and a half per match) and made 5 assists. It was Morozov with two goals and one accurate pass who turned out to be the main protagonist of the “leopards" in a victorious meeting with Magnitogorsk “Metallurg”. Especially successfully, his link plays in the majority. Well, the local September achievement so far belongs to Nikolai Zherdev, who left the Khimik near Moscow because of a new contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets club. After long negotiations, his agent persuaded the "blue jackets" on a three-year contract worth $ 6.9 million. The departure of Nicholas “Chemist” marked a major victory over CSKA.
Retirement of the month
The justification for the dismissal of experienced coaches of the Yaroslavl “Locomotive” and Magnitogorsk “Metallurgist” still haunts hockey fans. Moreover, the new head coaches have not yet been able to make drastic changes to the game of teams. For example, on Monday, the Magnitogorsk residents could not cope with “Amur” in Khabarovsk, who settled tightly at the bottom of the standings and whose “helmsman” was Andrei Sidorenko, the third candidate to leave the coaching clan of the Super League. According to rumors, Valery Bragin had already flown to the Far East for consultations with the club’s management, who remained unemployed after the death of Moscow Spartak. So the “Amur” on Monday fought with the “steelworkers” not only for themselves, but also for the coach.
Rude month
Reed Simpson, an American legionnaire in Vityaz near Moscow, has already earned a reputation as the rudest hockey player in the Super League. The striker came to Russia last season, spent 41 matches in which he made only three assists, but managed to get 275 penalty minutes. Once again, the namesake of the rude hero of the American cartoon "distinguished himself" in a meeting with the HC MVD. First, he organized a mass brawl on the site, and then, when the referee Rafael Kadyrov punished Simpson with a fine, the rude decided on the way to the locker room to squander unspent energy on the goalkeeper of the “policemen” Konstantin Simchuk. The HC MVD called the incident "lawlessness" and appealed to the president of the FHR, Vladislav Tretyak, demanding that the player be stripped of his professional license. However, an expert commission of the federation decided not to take matters to extremes. By the way, in the NHL, due to salary ceilings and tightened rules, it became unprofitable for clubs to keep “cops” on the benches, only occasionally letting them out on the ice to “maintain justice”. This innovation has not yet reached Russia.
Boris Titov