September
The season began with Dynamo Moscow beating Avangard Omsk via shootout to take the Opening Cup in the annual curtain-raiser. But the early attention was on Yaroslavl, where Lokomotiv returned to the league with a reborn team following last season’s tragedy. As the Volga city marked the anniversary of the disaster with a solemn tribute on September 7, the new-look Loko began its season with a 5-2 win at Sibir. Young forward Daniil Apalkov, one of the home-grown talents who had kept the club on the ice in last season’s MHL and VHL competitions, got his club’s opening goal on its return to the top league.
As well as Loko’s return, the KHL welcomed three new members and added two new countries to its empire. Lev Prague and Donbass Donetsk planted the flags of the Czech Republic and Ukraine on the KHL map, while Slovan Bratislava became the first European team to leave its domestic league and join the project. Lev adapted fastest, and was vying for the early lead at the end of the month.
Across the Atlantic, the NHL lock-out prompted a stream of big-name players to head to the KHL. Evgeny Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin came home to play for Metallurg Magnitogorsk and Dynamo Moscow respectively. Ilya Kovalchuk was another early arrival, joining SKA St. Petersburg in time for a head-to-head showdown at Dynamo. Ovi scored, but it was Kovi’s team which took the honors, winning 3-1 in front of a sell-out Luzhniki crowd.
October
Locked-out stars continued to come to the KHL, and the clash between Zdeno Chara’s Lev Prague and Ovechkin’s Dynamo drew more than 16,000 fans to Prague’s O2 Arena. That set a new record for the biggest KHL single-game attendance, although a hard-fought low-scoring game perhaps failed to live up to the occasion. Ovi’s scrappy third-period goal was enough to give Dynamo a 1-0 win.
Meanwhile Canadian forward Evander Kane became the first North American to try the KHL experience during the lock-out, joining Dinamo Minsk. His stay in Belarus, however, proved unsuccessful, not helped by the dismissal of Dinamo’s coach Kari Heikkila midway through the month.
Elsewhere Pavel Datsyuk was inspiring CSKA’s expensively revamped squad, while Neftekhimik’s rookie forward Nail Yakupov shrugged off a row between the league and his employer at Edmonton Oilers to return to Russian ice with a two-goal game-winning show at SKA.
And referees came under the spotlight in Chelyabinsk after a bizarre blunder allowed Lokomotiv to score a goal with seven players on the ice. The gaffe came early in the second period of the team’s game at Traktor when Sergei Plotnikov took advantage of the unexpected powerplay to put his team 2-1 up. Loko went on to win a in a shoot-out after a 2-2 tie.
November
The big news came at the end of the month with SKA surprising the hockey world by firing head coach Milos Riha. The characterful Czech had just led his team to the top of the KHL table, winning six games from seven that month and drawing capacity crowds to SKA’s home games.
Goals were flying in – SKA managed 109 in 28 games under Riha – and it seemed that the anger among some fans that a former boss of hated rival Spartak had finally abated. But the ax fell, bringing Finland’s Jukka Jalonen to the hot-seat.
On the ice, Loko’s Artyom Anisimov hit a rich vein of form, setting off on a 10-game scoring streak. The surge started with 1+1 in a 3-2 home win over CSKA, and it took a 1-5 reverse against Magnitka on Dec. 23 to silence the forward. In that time Anisimov posted 8+8.
In Central Europe another little bit of history was made as Lev and Slovan kicked off a new chapter of Czech and Slovak sporting rivalry. The teams met in Prague, drawing a 13,000-strong crowd to the Tipsport Arena, but it was Slovan which went back to Bratislava with a 2-1 win.
December
Team Russia – backed by a glittering roster of locked-out NHL men – stormed to a powerful victory at the Channel 1 Cup in Moscow and sets fans dreaming of Olympic glory in Sochi in 2014. Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk were the stars, but there were also promising displays from emerging talents such as Severstal’s Vadim Shipachyov and Loko’s Apalkov.
Datsyuk, meanwhile, had to get used to life under a new coach at CSKA as Valery Bragin is sacked following defeat to Dynamo Moscow on the eve of the internationals. In a spectacular game at Megasport, Dynamo raced into a 5-0 lead after two periods only for Datsyuk to inspire an unlikely fight-back. With the scores poised at 5-4, though, an empty net goal secured a nerve-jangling win for the defending champion … and sealed Bragin’s fate. Vyacheslav Butsayev took over for the rest of the season.
Dynamo had troubles of its own following a dispute with forward Mikhail Anisin. The star of last season’s play-offs refused to play for the club following a dispute with head coach Oleg Znarok, and the league’s disciplinary committee held that he was in breach of his contract. Eventually the striker headed to Severstal, rejoining Andrei Nazarov who had previously coached him at Vityaz. The defending champion went into the New Year vying with SKA and Lokomotiv for top spot in the Western Conference.
Last season’s runner-up, Avangard, was also performing strongly – going more than two months without a regulation time defeat until a surprise 4-1 reverse at Dinamo Riga. The Omsk outfit battled with rival Ak Bars Kazan for the lead in the Eastern Conference, while Evgeny Kuznetsov did his best to ensure that Traktor Chelyabinsk could hold its own in the South Ural rivalry with Malkin’s Magnitka.