Like a leopard

Of the 14 matches held, the team of Zinetula Bilyaletdinov lost only one - in Novosibirsk. The defense of Ak Bars is now one of the best in the Super League - only Lada and Khimik, the former and current teams of Peter Vorobyov, missed less than Kazan. The confident play of the Finnish goalkeeper Mika Noronen has already made fans of the capital of Tatarstan forget about the exploits of Fred Brathwaite. And nobody can cope with the first link of the Kazan attack. Half of the goals abandoned by Ak Bars are in the account of Alexei Morozov, Sergey Zinoviev and Danis Zaripov. Morozov still beats all conceivable performance records, scoring an average goal per game.

In the match against Dynamo, it was this troika that made the result again. Morozov scored at the end of the first period with a signature brush throw. Zaripov completed the multi-way combination, played in the majority (for the realization of the numerical advantage, Kazan also has no equal in the league). Zaripov completely mocked his rivals, and specifically - Sergei Zvyagin, staying with him on a penny face to face. “Ak Bars” won each of the three periods (the total score is 4: 1), and now his separation from the closest pursuer is nine points. But the teams have passed only a quarter of the tournament distance - what will happen next? The final advantage of the “leopards” (white) in the current regular season can be even more impressive than the “Magnitogorsk” Dave King - in the past.

The next steps of the tournament ladder occupied “Siberia” and “Chemist”. But if the take-off of the Moscow Region team was expected by specialists (it strengthened pretty well, and Peter Ilyich was invited not in vain), then the public was somehow not ready for the second place in Novosibirsk. So far, none of the hockey people have heard rational assumptions, what is the secret to the success of “Siberia”. Most agree that these successes are temporary. By the way, the club’s leaders modestly assess the capabilities of the team of Sergey Kotov and continue to claim that they do not claim more than getting into the top ten in the championship.

Recognized favorites (except, of course, Ak Bars) are so far more disappointing. “Vanguard” suffered two defeats in a row in Cherepovets and St. Petersburg, missing in each case five goals. “Dynamo” and “Lokomotiv” firmly settled in the middle of the table, and Magnitogorsk “Metallurg” is completely located near the departure zone. Fedor Kanareikin as head coach has won so far only one match out of five, and lost three times at home. After the defeat inflicted by “Magnitogorsk” by the Tolyatti “Lada” (4: 0), a more modest, but nevertheless victory was won in Magnitogorsk by “Salavat Yulaev” - 3: 2. At the same time, the goalkeeper of the hosts Travis Scott showed a rather vivid game, but even he was powerless to bail out his team three times - the Yulaevs scored all goals from the penny. Even replacing the goalkeeper with the sixth field player almost three minutes before the end, Kanareykin did not achieve the desired result.

Home syndrome is not just about metallurgists. “Cupid”, for example, has not yet won on its ice at all, and CSKA won the first victory only in the eighth home match. Permanent tournament failures force Vyacheslav Bykov to include very young players - for example, the goal of the army team in a duel with “Wings of the Soviets” was defended by Ivan Kasutin, who had not yet celebrated his 20th birthday, and Mikhail Anisin, who was invited from the farm club, opened the scoring. The total result was a double of Sergei Shirokov - 4: 1. The victory allowed CSKA to rise to tenth place, but this is not at all what the head coach of the Russian team is setting up his club wards.

MIKHAIL MELNIKOV