Review of the season: Ak Bars. Disappointing stars and first-round exit
KHL.ru keeps on reporting on the results of the 2023-2024 season for the League's clubs. Ak Bars strengthened an already formidable roster in hopes of repeating last season’s success, but had a very lackluster regular season and exited the Gagarin Cup playoffs in the first round.
After the end of the 2022-2023 season, Kazan didn’t make many moves in the market, but they didn’t need to — the key was to maintain their stacked lineup. The Ak Bars management succeeded in this — yes, Dmitry Voronkov left for North America, but they signed Dmitrij Jaskin, who plays a similar role to Voronkov. Additionally, they traded for Damir Zhafyarov from SKA and brought back Evgeny Svechnikov from the NHL. Regarding the coaching staff, the club managed to convince Zinetula Bilyaletdinov to stay for another season. As the coach himself said, he wanted to “finish what he started,” referring to the lost final series.
The Ak Bars roster was considered one of the deepest in the league, and their regular season reflected that — with a confident victory over CSKA in the Opening Cup, followed by a win against Traktor. However, Bilyaletdinov’s team struggled against lower-ranked teams, suffering defeats to Sochi (1:3), Dinamo Minsk (2:3), Severstal (1:4), Lada (3:6), and Neftekhimik (1:2). The list goes on, but the root cause remains unknown — perhaps both the players and the coaches had too much faith in each other’s abilities and skills. For most of the regular season, Ak Bars was in the middle of the Eastern Conference standings, finishing in fourth place. In the first round, Kazan faced Avtomobilist, and they only managed to win one game against the Urals side.
Best players
53 G, 31 W, 93.8%, GAA 1.85
When a team featuring Alexander Radulov, Vadim Shipachyov, and other top KHL stars has its best player being its goalie, it raises some questions. Timur Bilyalov, regardless of the team’s overall performance, had one of the best seasons of his career — he was the league’s top goalie in save percentage (93.8%) and shutouts (7), and he tied for first place with Daniil Isayev from Lokomotiv in goals-against average (1.85).
68 games, 28 (8+20) points
The importance of Dmitry Yudin to the current Ak Bars team is underscored by his numbers — second among defensemen in average ice time (19 minutes and 49 seconds per game), second in the plus-minus rating among defensemen (+11), and a personal best in points for a single KHL season. Yudin also played on the second power-play unit and performed well in this role — no other Ak Bars defenseman scored more power-play goals than he did throughout the season. Additionally, Yudin played in the KHL Fonbet All-Star Game for the first time in his career.
73 games, 41 (13+28) points
Semyonov became the team’s third-highest scorer after Radulov and Shipachyov. However, the thing is that everyone knows the level of Alexander and Vadim, and in the 2023-2024 season, both were far from their best. Serving as the team’s second center, Kirill reached the 40+ points mark for the second time in his career, topped Ak Bars’ in differential for the entire season (+19), and his line with Semyon Koshelev and Stanislav Galiyev was one of the few bright spots in Kazan’s game towards the end of the regular season.
73 games, 17 (7+10) points
A product of Orenburg hockey, he went through the entire Ak Bars system and debuted with the senior team back in 2020 when he was 17 years old. Since then, he played only sporadically, accumulating just 30 games over three seasons. In his first full season with Ak Bars, like Semyonov, he didn’t miss a single game and looked very comfortable on the fourth line – most often playing alongside Artyom Lukoyanov and Nikita Dynyak. Scoring 17 points and having the second-best differential rating on the team after Semyonov (+17) is a solid result for the 21-year-old forward. Additionally, after the KHL season ended, Katelevesky helped Neftyanik Almetievsk, one of Ak Bars’ two farm teams in the VHL, win the Petrov Cup.
Coaching
Zinetula Bilyaletdinov returned to Ak Bars in 2022 when the team was struggling under the leadership of Oleg Znarok. Initially, Zinetula Khaydarovich was listed as an assistant to interim head coach Yuri Babenko, but he soon took over the main role himself. He brought order to the team when the internal atmosphere was less than ideal, raised them to the top of the Eastern Conference, and led them to the Gagarin Cup finals, where Ak Bars rallied from a 1-3 series deficit but ultimately lost to CSKA in the seventh game. In Kazan, the coach was once again seen as a messiah – even the President of Tatarstan asked him to stay in his position. And he did stay, but he couldn’t replicate the previous year’s success.
At the season-end press conference, the legendary Ak Bars coach stated that he would like to remain with the club, but in a different capacity – possibly referring to a role similar to the advisor to the executive director, a position he held back when Znarok was in charge of the team. The new head coach of Ak Bars is former Traktor’s bench boss Anvar Gatiyatulin, who expressed that he wants to see active and fast-paced hockey from his players.
Best game
Ak Bars opened their home program for the 2023-2024 campaign with a match against Traktor. Initially, things didn’t go very well: by the 18th minute, the hosts were down 0:2, and by the 24th minute, it was 1:3, with Dmitry Kagarlitsky scoring the only Kazan goal at that point. Then the leaders stepped up – Artyom Lukoyanov reduced the deficit to one, Dmitrij Jaskin scored twice in just over 10 minutes, and Alexander Radulov netted a powerplay tally to set the final score.
Youngsters
Bilyaletdinov has a reputation as a coach who doesn’t particularly like working with young players. This reputation is supported by the numbers: in the 2023-2024 season, Ak Bars used 10 players aged 23 or younger, but only three of them – Katelevsky, Ilya Safonov, and Maxim Bykov – played more than 20 matches. Semyon Terekhov and Nikita Yevseyev (both 19 games), Artemy Knyazev (18 games), and Artur Akhtyamov (17 games) fell just short of this mark.
Akhtyamov, however, deserves special mention. At one point during the season, Ak Bars lost both their first and second goalies to injuries. As a result, Artur, who started the season as the third-string netminder, became the main goalie and performed very well: six wins in 17 games and one shutout.
Summer work
So far, Ak Bars’ activity on the transfer market has been marked mainly by high-profile departures: Kagarlitsky moved to Torpedo, Radulov signed with Lokomotiv, and there’s still no clarity on the futures of Shipachyov, Lukoyanov, and Kirill Petrov. Additionally, defenseman Kirill Adamchuk joined Dynamo Moscow.
As for signings, aside from the new head coach, the team has added Yegor Korshkov from Amur. Contracts were extended with Bilyalov, Yudin (during the previous season), Semyonov, and veteran d-man Alexei Marchenko.
