Andrei Altybarmakyan: “I’m happy to be back at home”
Altybarmakyan spent the last two years overseas, where he tried his way into the Chicago lineup from the farm club. In the summer, the forward returned to the KHL and signed a contract with his former club, HC Sochi. In this interview with KHL.ru, Andrei talked about why he decided to return to the KHL, analyzed the life and hockey experience gained in North America, and gave valuable advice to those who are going to visit Sochi.
The forward signed a contract in Sochi not long ago. “In fact, the reasons for this are trivial,” he explains. “In North America, the free agent market opened on Jul 13. My agent called me the other day, and told me that the teams that wanted to take me were still playing in the Stanley Cup. I, of course, did not know that, and Chicago did not give me an exact answer regarding a new contract. I didn’t want to wait long at my age. Plus, I wanted to come back, I missed my homeland, the Russian food, the language. I wanted to show in Russia what I learned there. I talked to the club, and signed a contract with Sochi. I’m glad I came back. I hope to have my best season.”
Altybarmakyan had a eventful offseason so far. “I didn’t have much rest,” the forward says. “We finished the playoffs on May 20, and I came back to Russia a week later. Roughly speaking, it was June, there were contract talks going. Plus, I went on to play in the 3×3 tournament, so I didn’t lose any form. I didn’t get much rest, but why should I rest at this age — I’ll do it later.”
HC Sochi is now a very different team if compared to two years ago, when he left the Black Sea shore to join the Chicago Blackhawks on an entry-level contract. “You can see that the lineup is much younger now,” Altybarmakyan replies on his new and at the same time old team. “The locker room was repainted, I noticed it at once. The staff remains the same, I know everyone. I think we will do well, we have a good, young, competitive team. I hope that we can repeat the success that we had when I played in Sochi and that we made the playoffs and put the pressure on Lokomotiv. We’ll try to accomplish that goal.”
In the 2019-2020 season, Sochi didn’t have Andrei Nazarov behind the bench, but three coaches split head coaching duties, with Alexander Andriyevsky, Leonids Beresnevs, and Sergei Zubov shifting one after another. “Nazarov is a very hard-working coach,” he shares his views. “It was hard for me to train twice a day, because in America I kind of lost this habit. There we had one practice on the ice, then the gym, and that was the end of it. But here I was already getting involved in the first days. The volume of skating here is huge. I had forgotten about our Russian training camps, but now I remember, my muscles remember too. I think I’ll get into the season all right.”
The forward decided to try his luck overseas after a good campaign with Sochi. “Yes, I left, and just as things began to change dramatically in Sochi. I don’t regret my move. Chicago drafted me, I went and saw what the game is there. I improved my English, I really wanted to improve my English. I watched, lived their life, played hockey. I played a lot of games. I think I would have played less in two years at Sochi than I did there.” He also said that he was close to have his NHL debut with the Blackhawks when playing with the Rockford IceHogs of the AHL. “There was a stretch when I had a good scoring streak, and earned myself a spot on the first line in the AHL. At the beginning of the season, it was a mess, there were about five Chicago players with one-way contracts at the farm club, of course they had a huge role within the team. As it was hard to get a spot, I didn’t start crying and looking around for a trade. I’m not the kind of person who changes teams right away. I was close to play my first game in the NHL, but some factors played against me. We didn’t have a general manager all season, we had just an acting manager, and he wasn’t allowed to make any drastic changes. I wanted to play in the NHL, I felt I could show something. There was a rebuilding going on, they fired all the managers, Scotty Bowman, who had done so much for the club. They fired the coaches and even the doctors. You can see that this year they didn’t have many forces left for the development of the club, let’s see where their rebuilding will lead.”
Usually after stints in North America, players declare that their game improved. “I don’t like to talk about it,” he says. “I think I understand more how to distribute my strengths during the game. I was good at puck battles before, but I think I improved there as well. In the AHL, there are guys who run and tear you down all the time, but there are also smart players. They’re signing with KHL clubs right now, by the way. It will be interesting to see them in our League. I think I grew as a person, as a hockey player. As you get older, you have to improve in something, and I think I am now better in everything I think I needed to.”
Altybarmakyan is famed for being a locker room leader, and it didn’t change overseas. “I was calmer in training camp in Chicago, but when I came down to Rockford, I relaxed there and talked quietly in the locker room,” the forward confirms. “Of course, they didn’t understand me at all, but I improved my language. We had a Canadian player, John Quenneville, a relative of the famous coach Joel. He welcomed me very warmly and helped me. He and I would open up YouTube, he would play old songs, stop them, and explain to me in English what the words meant. It was a fun time, really. It’s just a shame that he went to Switzerland afterwards. He really helped me figure out my English, to not be shy, to talk. In the second year I was already cracking jokes there, everything was fine.”
“In general, we had one of the nicest teams at Rockford, I don’t know why that happened. I asked some of the guys, they went home after practice. But with us everyone was close to us, we visited each other, invited everyone to dinner. It was fun, there was no such thing as coming home and sitting there. But they also called me to play golf. I could barely hit the ball, but I drove everybody in a golf cart.”
In Sochi, Altybarmakyan will have a chance to rejoin with his old friend, goalie Alexei Melnichuk. “Yes, having him here played a role,” e confirms. “In fact, even when he was moving to North America, he was choosing from several clubs, and one of the options was Chicago. He didn’t go to me at the time, but I’m very happy that we will be on the same team. I think he was tired of losing in the AHL, they had a terrible team. He’s very motivated, too. He and I are two of a kind as we don’t like to lose, and I’m sure we’ll have a great season together. Moreover, we haven’t seen each other for a long time. Alexei is the only person I haven’t met in America for two years, we haven’t crossed paths anywhere. I met Mikhail Maltsev, Vasily Podkolzin, Pavel Dorofeev, Daniil Miromanov, Alexander Alexeyev, and even Ivan Morozov in New York. I couldn’t meet Alexei. But now we’ll make up for it.”
With Andrei Nazarov behind the bench, now HC Sochi is more ambitious and has a better plan on the ice. “I think we will rely on our activity, on our endurance. Now the training camp has just started, we are working on the volume of skating. We are preparing for 68 regular-season games, now there will be more games, and the schedule will be denser. I know that we will play active hockey, we can’t do it any other way. All our guys are young, we have strength. I think it will be hard to play against us.”
The team has a goal to reach the playoffs. “I think we can do it this year. I’ve seen the roster of the other teams in our conference. It seems to me that we should be able to do that. We’ll make every effort for that. I haven’t really thought about my personal goals yet. I want to help the team, fans are great here in Sochi. We need to get them back to the stands and this can only be done by our good play.”
