Severstal season preview: Kozyrev’s second year and golden juniors

KHL.ru continues its review of how each team is preparing for the coming season. In Cherepovets, Severstal managed to avoid losing key players and added some handy reinforcements. More importantly, the team’s young leaders are a year older and wiser.

Last season

It wasn’t the first time that Severstal emerged as everyone’s second favorite team, the club most likely to earn plaudits from fans of others. A combination of securing results bigger than the team’s budget, playing attractive hockey and asking questions of higher-profile opponents all make the Steelmen popular throughout the league. Despite Andrei Razin’s move to a higher level (and the departure of several leading players), this didn’t change. Andrei Kozyrev kept Severstal on the same path. The team once again reached the playoffs, finishing in a comfortable fifth place in the west with club records for wins (36) and goals scored (203).

It was a fourth successive playoff campaign for Severstal, and it ended like the previous three with a first-round loss. Spartak was the favorite in the match-up and deserved to progress. However, as in the previous three seasons, Severstal did not go down without a fight.

Recruitment

Departures:

Defensemen: Nikita Sedov (CSKA), Mikhail Tikhonov (Admiral), Vasily Shumilov (Torpedo), Christian Jaros (CSKA). Forwards:  Nikita Guslistov (Dinamo Minsk), Alexander Zhabreyev (Dynamo St. Petersburg, VHL), Nikita Rozhkov (CSKA)

Arrivals:

Goalie: Timofei Korolyov (Tambov, VHL). Defensemen: Yaroslav Dyblenko (CSKA), Yanni Kaldis (Dinamo Minsk), Mark Marin (Torpedo).  Forwards: Daniil Davydov (Dynamo Moscow, loan), Alexei Kruchinin (Torpedo)

Top 3 signings

Yanni Kaldis joins Severstal from Dinamo Minsk, following the path trod by Mark Barberio a year earlier. At Dinamo he was second in scoring among defensemen in his first KHL season. There are reasons to expect even more in his second season, not least because Christian Jaros’s place on the Severstal power play is open for the newcomer.

Two years ago, Alexander Kruchinin was one of the stars as Torpedo took off. He was signed on a try-out contract and, at age 31, produced a career best season. But last season his relationship with Igor Larionov soured. Alexei was stripped of the captaincy and later cut from the team. Joining up with Kozyrev again means reuniting with a coach who clearly played a key role in that big season two years ago, and promising to bring benefits for Severstal. If nothing else, aged 33, Alexei will be one of the most experienced voices in the locker room. And most likely on the ice as well.

Apart from Barberio and Kruchinin, Severstal has just one other 30-something player – ex-CSKA man Yaroslav Dyblenko. He is here to strengthen a penalty kill that was third in the league last season behind Avtomobilist and Torpedo.

Coaching

A year ago we predicted that Andrei Kozyrev’s appointment would hurt Torpedo and boost Severstal. That’s pretty much how it turned out, with Severstal overtaking Torpedo in the tournament standings. Moreover, this happened after a summer of big players leaving Cherepovets, followed by the departures of Daniil Vovchenko and Alexander Petunin during the season. Severstal also finished above defending champion CSKA.

Kozyrev’s game isn’t just about winning, but winning well: his team plays attractive hockey. After an impressive debut season as a KHL head coach, it reasonable to assume that there’s even more to come.

Goaltending

Every cloud has a silver lining. Last season saw injuries for both Konstantin Shostak and Dmitry Shugayev as they competed for the starting role. Yet Alexander Samoilov, called up from the VHL as an emergency reserve, emerged as the #1. At the end of the season and, apart from one game, in the playoffs, Samoilov’s consistency dipped. But overall, he seems to have moved from #3 to #1 in the pecking order. However, all three of Severstal’s goalies are too good to be a third choice, so it’s possible one will be traded.

Defense

Almost all the core is staying in Cherepovets. The biggest losses come on defense, but even here two of the four departing players did not play a huge part last season. In their place come three new faces, Kaldis and Dyblenko as mentioned above, plus another of Kozyrev’s old Torpedo colleagues Mark Marin.

Timofei Davydov, who arrived from Avangard a year ago, made the expected step up and even became his team’s most productive D-man, even though he rarely featured on the power play. He’s barely 22, and can look forward to further progress.

Forwards

The offense remains almost unchanged, with only the addition of Kruchinin. It won’t be easy to find a spot for him: Ilya Ivantsov’s and Ruslan Abrosimov’s lines seem like natural partnerships and it’s inconceivable that Danil Aimurzin would lose his spot on the first line. In the first warm-up game, Kozyrev used Kruchinin with youngsters Mikhail Ilyin and Timur Mukhanov, but there’s no guarantee that this would continue – not least because Ilyin performed well alongside Aimurzin and Kirill Pilipenko. When those three were on the ice together, Severstal scored 25 goals at equal strength, a figured bettered only by Spartak’s Ivan Morozov line and Avangard’s Ryan Spooner trio.

Youngsters

Severstal is renowned for icing one of the youngest teams in the KHL and not even the arrival of Kruchinin and Dyblenko will significantly change that. The kids are notable not just for their quantity, but also their quality. In particular, there’s a lot of excitement around the previously-mentioned Aimurzin, Davydov, Ivantsov and Ilyin, none of whom have reached 23. For them, and also for the likes of Vladimir Grudinin, Gleb Ivanov, Mukhanov and Ivan Podshivalov, we can expect further progress to come.

Expectations

Severstal is definitely no weaker than a year ago and its promising juniors have another year’s experience behind them. That’s why it’s reasonable to expect, at the very least, a repeat of last season’s result. However, defending that fifth place in the west will be trickier in the face of a wounded CSKA looking to improve on last year’s disappointment. It’s possible that Severstal might drop a place or two in the standings, but it’s unlikely to miss out on the playoffs.