In the Russian hockey team for the third time in two and a half years the head coach was replaced. The new mentor of the national team, as well as traditionally playing a prominent role in its acquisition of St. Petersburg SKA, has been effectively led the youth team Valery Bragin for many years. The vacated post in the youth team will go to the legend of Russian hockey Igor Larionov, who served as his consultant. The Russian hockey community generally reacted positively to appointments, regardless of the specificity of the background of both specialists who had been promoted.
Yesterday, the Russian Hockey Federation (FHR) and SKA, one of the giants of the Continental Hockey League (KHL), confirmed information on a number of notable personnel shifts. Alexey Kudashov resigned from the posts of head coach of the national team and the St. Petersburg club. They were taken by Valery Bragin, who had previously trained the youth team, and since January, combined work in it with work in the SKA coaching team. The term of Mr. Bragin’s contract with FHR is two years. According to FHR, its headquarters for the national team included Aleksey Zhamnov, Alexander Boykov, Rashit Davydov, Andrey Kozyrev, Alexander Troshin, Yuri Zhdanov and Lars Johansson. The post of the head coach of the “youth team” will go to the legendary center forward Igor Larionov: last season he was a consultant with Mr. Bragin.
Valery Bragin told the FHR official website that “the system of work in the country’s main team for searching and selecting candidates, the conditions for the development and preparation of players has long been debugged,” and “there is a constant connection, continuity between teams of all ages, everything has long been a single whole and subordinate to the achievement of the overall result. ” Speaking about the upcoming season, the coach noted that although the system he mentioned “gives fruit”, “at the same time, we have a lot of work.” Valery Bragin recalled that because of the coronavirus pandemic, the next World Cup – in May 2021 – could well be held without NHL players (the North American league, where most Russian stars play, plans to start later and finish another season later), and therefore we should do our best to prepare players playing in Russia. ”
Valery Bragin will personally take part in this training in his club: SKA is traditionally one of the largest suppliers of players for the national team in its various formats. Talking about club tasks, Mr. Bragin noted that, due to the pandemic, the previous KHL season “unfortunately remained unfinished”, “although the team was in good shape and claimed to win.” “Next year, I hope we will be able to continue and successfully complete what we have begun,” Valery Bragin added, adding that in the offseason the team “seriously rejuvenated the squad” and “will continue to pursue a development policy for young hockey players.”
SKA Vice President Roman Rotenberg, who also manages the national team’s headquarters, called Valery Bragin “an experienced coach who proved his worth while working with the Russian youth team last season in SKA”, and “loving and able to work with both young and with experienced hockey players. ” Mr. Rotenberg is convinced that “with the new SKA headquarters, we can maintain a balance between sporting tasks and the development of players.” However, he focused on the fact that “now it’s especially important to responsibly prepare hockey players for the national team”, indicating that at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, where the Russian team won gold, in her application there were 15 SKA players. And victory at the next Winter Olympic Games – in 2022 in Beijing, according to Mr. Rotenberg, is the “main goal”.
The permutation package initiated by FHR and SKA, no matter how sonorous the names of the people involved in them, can in any case be described as unconditionally extraordinary for a number of reasons. The first is the absence of absolutely obvious reasons for the resignation of Alexei Kudashov. In the role of head coach of the Russian national team, he stayed one season and did not hold a single top tournament. Kudashov did not have a real test because of the coronavirus that disrupted the 2020 World Cup.
With SKA this season, Alexei Kudashov was moving towards another clash with CSKA’s most important competitor. Petersburgers, who finished second in the regular season second in the Western Conference after the Moscow army team, were preparing for the second round of the Gagarin Cup due to the coronavirus at the time the championship stopped. Previously, various sources referred to “family circumstances” as a version, at least partially explaining his departure.
The second reason is the background of those who got promoted. It is quite specific. 59-year-old Igor Larionov still has not actually been engaged in coaching. 63-year-old Valery Bragin has a rich coaching track record, but he is very special. Mr. Bragin earned a reputation as a class specialist solely thanks to the youth team (under 20 years old). He trained her with a short break throughout the entire decade that ended, and he trained very effectively. With Valery Bragin, the “youth team” won the 2011 World Cup, and in the next seven, under his leadership, only once, in 2018, did not get on the podium. At the same time, at several of these considered prestigious tournaments, she was not rated very high because she did not have a rich set of ex-juniors in demand in the NHL. However, at an adult level, Valery Bragin did not achieve anything similar to such successes, although he managed to work hard at Spartak, Atlanta and even CSKA. On the contrary, employers, as a rule, quickly parted with him.
However, those who are closely following the life of the hockey team of Russia cannot get used to extraordinary personnel shifts in it. On the contrary, over the past two years they have become more likely to be perceived as the norm. In 2018, immediately before the World Cup, SKA and the national team unexpectedly left Oleg Znarok, who had just brought her to the gold of the Pyeongchang Olympics, just like Valery Bragin, who was distinguished by efficiency and stability. Ilya Vorobyov, who replaced him at both posts, did not last two seasons either. At his first world championship, only heading the national team, he lost in overtime to the favorites of the Canadians in the quarter-finals, in the second he won bronze. At the 2019 championship in Slovakia, the team made a single misfire, in the semifinals with the Finns, and only the fact that the Russian bid this time two-thirds consisted of NHL stars and looked extremely powerful allowed to interpret it as a serious failure. But Ilya Vorobyov lost his positions both in the national team and in the club, losing them to assistant Alexei Kudashov, whose segment at the top of the coaching hierarchy generally came out extremely short.
The Russian hockey community seems to have generally favored yesterday’s appointments. An outstanding striker Pavel Bure described them “Kommersant” as “expected and very logical.” In Mr. Bure’s opinion, the Russian youth team under the leadership of Valery Bragin and Igor Larionov at the last world championship (she took silver in it, losing to the Canadians in the final) played “attacking, combination hockey, which was nice to watch and that yielded results”: “And even if our team didn’t have enough just before the victory, it was clear that this is how all our national teams should play.” And the legendary scorer of the USSR national team Boris Mikhailov said that he had long told Igor Larionov, “that he needs to start a coaching career and pass on his vast experience to the younger generation.” According to the great striker, in Russian hockey there are “good youth” and “many guys are able to grow into players who will be world famous”.
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