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Sibir season review: records for Beck, Sharov, and Murphy
KHL.ru continues reviewing the 2022-2023 season for the league’s team analyzing Sibir’s campaign. The Novosibirs side had a good regular season, at one point even leading the Eastern Conference, but then losing some momentum near the end. However, in the elimination stage, just like one year ago, Sibir only collected one OT win.
In August, Sibir made the news for a couple of hot-tempered pre- and post-game talks by its head coach, Andrei Martemyanov, where he colorfully asked his players to play simpler hockey. However, Novosibirsk also performed well on the ice. They notably defeated twice the future sensation of the season, Larionov’s Torpedo, 5:2 and 4:1, respectively. They also secured victories against Dynamo Moscow and Avangard. However, they suffered a 0:3 loss to Sochi — where Martemyanov had his most popular speech. This marked the end of the preseason and seemed to set the tone for the start of the regular season. In September, Sibir didn’t exactly slump, but their performance was inconsistent. They accumulated points, but in the first 12 regulation time games, they only managed three victories, and those were against less formidable opponents such as Sochi, Kunlun, and Neftekhimik. Sibir ended September with a win over CSKA in Moscow but then began to struggle again. Over time, things improved significantly. By mid-January, the Novosibirsk side had entered the battle for conference leadership and eventually claimed the top spot. In February, Sibir became the first team in the East to secure a playoff berth. However, they lost six out of eight games as the regular season approached its end, and as a result, dropped out of the top four and finished in sixth place (despite having the same number of points as Avtomobilist and Metallurg, who had more wins). Salavat Yulaev and Avangard finished only three points ahead, while Ak Bars accumulated much more points.
In the first round, Sibir faced Avangard, and the Novosibirsk side managed to secure one first victory in Omsk. However, that win remained their only one. In the two home games, they had to break through Avangard’s solid defense. In their attempts, they made numerous mistakes, resulting in conceding eight goals from just 27 shots from the opposition. In the fifth game, the lead switched back and forth between Avangard and Sibir. Michal Cajkovsky scored with two minutes remaining in the closing frame, sending the game into OT, which ended in just over two minutes.
Top players
57 (18+39) points in 72 games
The signing of Taylor Beck last summer was seen as a clear illustration of Martemyanov’s intention to reorient Sibir towards a more attacking style of hockey compared to the 2021-2022 season. And indeed, it happened as expected: Beck fit perfectly into the new team, notably transforming the top power play unit. Interestingly, Sibir ranked 14th in the league in power play success (in terms of time spent per goal scored in power play), which is an improvement but still not particularly high. However, Beck still emerged as the regular season’s top scorer with the man advantage (8+21), surpassing Vadim Shipachyov by just two points.
In addition, Beck set new club records for the most points and assists in a single regular season. Without him, it is unlikely that Trevor Murphy and Alexander Sharov’s records, which will be discussed later, would have been achieved.
50 (12+38) points in 67 games
Murphy became the highest-scoring defenseman in a single regular season in the Sibir’s history, surpassing Patrik Hersley’s record by more than one and a half times. In the entire league, he was only surpassed by Alexander Nikishin among fellow defensemen. Nearly half of his points (5+18, the ninth-highest total) were earned with the man advantage, despite often occupying a position that is not typically suited for a right-handed player on powerplay units.
55 (31+24) points in 70 games
Sharov also didn’t go without records, thanks in part to Beck, as he had a breakthrough season. He became the all-time leading single-season scorer in Sibir’s history and moved to second place in the team’s all-time lists for total points (188) and goals scored (88) in the KHL. Additionally, Alexander equaled the league record for the most OT goals during a single regular season, with four tallies.
Head coach
Andrei Martemyanov demanded simplicity from his players. Simplicity is often associated with a defensive emphasis, playing on the counterattack, and similar aspects. However, that’s not always the case. Over the past two seasons, we witnessed two different versions of Sibir’s simplicity: a rather dull one in 2021-2022 and a more entertaining one in 2022-2023. Interestingly, this “entertaining simplicity” turned out to be more effective than the “dull” style, debunking another established stereotype. This transformation, combined with a relatively modest lineup on paper, speaks loud to Martemyanov’s good work. Unfortunately, this only applies to the regular season. In the playoffs, despite having a fundamentally different set of players, the Novosibirsk side initially showed that they could compete on equal terms (and even outplay) the more star-studded Avangard in the series’ opening game. However, the second and especially the third and fourth games were approached differently, trying to overpower the opponent where patience was required. Martemyanov’s coaching shortcoming was his inability (or unwillingness) to adjust the team’s approach.
In total, under Martemyanov’s guidance for two seasons, Sibir won 64 out of 118 regular-season matches but only two out of ten in the playoffs (both in OT). Despite the apparent success in the regular season, their lack of success in the playoffs cost him his position. In the following season, David Nemirovsky will take over as the team’s head coach while Andrei Martemyanov returns to Amur, where he worked five years ago.
Best game
At the end of November, Ak Bars was, on the one hand, not the most formidable opponent. On the other hand, their unusually low position — a mere seventh place in the Eastern conference — served as additional motivation, likening them to a cornered beast. Meanwhile, the Novosibirsk side was in second place in the East and considered the favorites. However, few could have expected their victory in Kazan to be so convincing — 6:3. It was the first (and last) time in the season that they scored more than five goals in a game. And the main hero was, of course, Beck, who posted a hat-trick of assists and added a tally. Interestingly, this was the third time in Taylor’s KHL career that he recorded four points, and the previous occasion — four years ago — was also against Ak Bars.
Youngsters
In terms of average age (26 years and 281 days), Sibir positioned itself right in the middle — with its 11th place in the league. However, overall, Martemyanov preferred avoiding to actively utilize the younger players, only involving six of them throughout the season, with three of them playing in less than half of the matches. In recent years, Dmitry Ovchinnikov was considered the best prospects from the Sibir’s pipeline, but he had a mixed season. On one hand, he played in every regular season game without a single break, but on the other hand, he mostly played in the lower lines and rarely received more than ten minutes of ice time.
Either way, defenseman Yegor Alanov emerged as a prominent figure. Martemyanov started trusting him with a spot on the penalty-killing unit as early as the 2022 playoffs, and now he has become a full-fledged member of the unit. In the 2023 playoffs, Yegor also showcased his playmaking skills, as he had the highest percentage (88.7%) of accurate passes among all players who made at least 100 successful passes in the first round. Nikita Yefremov’s situation was somewhat similar to Ovchinnikov’s: he played many games (62) but had limited ice time (an average of 11 and a half minutes); however, he managed to block a considerable number of shots, given his playing time.
Summer progress
Sibir has more departures than acquisitions at the moment; especially notable will be the absence of sniper Sharov, first-line center Valentin Pyanov, second-leading scorer among defensemen Michal Cajkovsky, as well as the energy players Denis Golubev and Evgeny Chesalin. However, there is some good news, primarily the extensions of Beck and Murphy, as well as a fairly large group of less significant but still valuable players. Despite the significant departures, the situation doesn’t appear to be catastrophic; the main concern is the first-line center position, which the Novosibirsk team is trying to address by bringing in an import player.
