If your team cannot score a single goal against Kunlun, who consistently receive 40 or more shots on goal in each match, then you are in trouble. If it is a rich team, then the problem is twofold. If Alexander Radulov, Vadim Shipachev and Dmitry Yashkin play on the first line, then we can sound the alarm.
This is exactly what is happening now at Ak Bars. Just today, SE colleagues presented the result of a survey among KHL general directors: 12 out of 21 respondents send the Gagarin Cup to Kazan, there is no one closer. However, the coaches expressed their opinion regarding the crisis of Bilyaletdinov’s team, and it is manifested very clearly: six defeats in the last seven games, in three games the Kazan super attack did not score a single goal.
A rare pleasant event for Ak Bars in recent times:
He didn’t make it to the NHL, but in Russia he already became a legend. Shipachev has 900 points in the KHL!
The situation is a bit reminiscent of last year: Oleg Znarok left Ak Bars at the end of November in the middle of a monstrous gambling crisis; However, this was accompanied by balances on the cup eight line and a series of memes about the Shipachevskys and local clans. . Now there is nothing like that, but at the same time Ak Bars’ position in the table is no longer comfortable: a couple more unsuccessful matches and the team could fall directly to seventh place in the East. Should home fans panic?
Episode of the match “Ak Bars” – “Dynamo”
Photo: RIA Novosti
Business Online journalists, immersed in the subject, told what is currently happening at the club. The publication quoted one of the team’s players: “We all have to run on defense. Defense and defense – this is exactly what Bilyaletdinov demands.” Now the veteran coach demands total defense from his team, which surprises even those who have worked with him for a long time. Bilyaletdinov supposedly wants to improve his defense now so that he will be useful in the playoffs.
“In attack, if we leave aside the individual creative revelations, the scheme is also simple. We won the fight – raised to blue – attack. A direct shot, a shot or a rebound enters. If the game continues, the pattern repeats itself,” writes KHL TV commentator Vitaly Maggranov on his Telegram channel. This sounds like the tactics of the stereotypical “Amur” or “Admiral”, but not a team that has so many creative wingers that Damir Zhafyarov is forced to sit on the bench for half the championship.
The general director of Ak Bars spoke about the selection a month ago:
Exclusive
“We saw Zhafyarov as a leader, but it hasn’t worked out yet.” Start of the season with the general director of Ak Bars
But let’s look at it from the other side. More recently, Metallurg found itself at a similar peak. How many revelations have we learned about Magnitka during this period: that Andrei Razin is not a coach for big things, that the team is too light and adventurous, and that he does not talk to the hockey players as he should? After that, Metallurg won nine matches in a row; Apparently, during this time everything in the team changed and the coach became different. But this is not so.
It seems that not everyone is accustomed to the fact that in a 68-game season, major relegations are inevitable; Going through the entire regular season without problems is absolutely unrealistic. Take the NHL as an example: champion Vegas failed in January 2023, losing 8 of 10 games and scoring only 21 goals during this period. John Cooper’s Tampa, which played in the final, had a characteristic moment of decline: February-March, when almost everything fell out of the Lightning’s hands. Should we expect from Ak Bars that a team of such average age does not play a streak of 7-8 games during which it seems absolutely dismantled?
Zinetula Bilyaletdinov
Photo: Alexander Safonov, “Championship”
Are Zinetula Bilyaletdinov and his system relevant to the modern KHL? The question is quite strange. Of course, this season is marked by an unusual move towards attack for our league, but literally in January-February of this year, Ak Bars went through the regular season like an asphalt paver, even after the autumn failures, securing the first place in the East, and eliminated Avangard in the playoffs precisely in the battle of coaches. Mikhail Kravets did not think of anything against Bilyaletdinov’s plans. Has the league changed that much in six months or has Zinetula Khaidarovich suddenly given up?
Now it is being discussed whether it was worth staying with the veteran coach, who a year ago was returned to Ak Bars by everyone and received a fairly large contract. Rather, it would be strange to eliminate Bilyaletdinov after his team was one shot away from the championship and there weren’t many alternatives on the market. Information was received that ZHB wanted to see Alexey Kudashov, who played in Bilyaletdinov’s teams, as his heir, but he won the hardware war and remained at Dynamo. Apparently, Ilya Vorobyov wanted to take a year off, but now it is difficult to attract foreigners to Russia.
In fact, you can understand the coach’s current logic. The Ak Bars stars don’t need hockey player Kurban Berdyev, who would take them by the hand across the ice and show them where to stand and how to properly receive the puck. Kazan has gathered players to whom you can say “Crush!” – and they will destroy with the whistle. There is no point in wasting attacking forces at the moment: Ak Bars in the KHL in recent years have never been too spectacular in the regular season. There is only one question: Has Bilyaletdinov not tightened the nuts too much by using old-school methods with cylinders and such? According to his teammates, ZCB now has a principle: either you do what the coach says or you sit on the bench.
Ak Bars is currently solving the transfer problem. At the time of writing this text, there was official confirmation of Riley Barber’s transfer to the Kazan Club. On the one hand, Barber is a great teacher who demonstrated it in a short time in the KHL. On the other hand, Ak Bars already has a huge overabundance of creative wingers, and the American in Barys more often demonstrated his abilities against weak teams. However, Bilyaletdinov approved the exchange and there is no reason to expect that the foreign player in Kazan will end up in the coaching “kennel”, as they say in the United States.
Ak Bars front line
Photo: Andrei Kholmov, foto.khl.ru
Another intriguing signing is Mitchell Miller. This player is not just a man who was kicked out of the NHL due to the handicap scandal. An American, he won nearly every individual award in the USHL junior two years ago, scoring 83 points in 60 games and winning the player of the year award. At the beginning of the season, Miller dominated the Slovak league, averaging one and a half points per game, but the level of the leagues must also be taken into account. In terms of pure defense, Mitchell, of course, cannot be considered a standard, and in attack he is sometimes predictable; in some ways this is reminiscent of Ryan Merkley in Kunlun or Libor Shulak outside the Leonid Tambiev system.
Let’s remember the details of the scandal surrounding the newcomer to the KHL:
“It has no place in the NHL.” An unprecedented scandal shocked the United States
Finally, Alexey Marchenko, who missed most of last season due to injury, is on trial at Ak Bars. The defender became another great signing for Lokomotiv in the NSA market, which did not fully meet all expectations (including salary) and, due to his state of health, remained without offers for a long time. Marchenko has a right grip, something unusual for Ak Bars, which among Kazan defenders is possessed by the disgraced Vyacheslav Voinov; This will help diversify both the special team and the attack as a whole.
The history of past seasons tells us that big clubs can overcome failures if they have a great squad. Gone are the days when the star-studded SKA and the Dynamo of the Umark-Gudler era were eliminated in the first round. And Ak Bars overcame the crisis last year, and SKA still reached the conference finals in the 2015/16 season, because in the KHL the well-known stereotype still works the other way around: in the playoffs, a large number of classes win at any order and, in general, Everything. But if the Kazan club does not get out of this hole, then one can talk about tectonic changes in the landscape of the KHL.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS