Salavat Yulaev season preview: breaking a two-year cycle

KHL.ru continues its club-by-club previews ahead of the 2024-2025 campaign. In Ufa, Salavat Yulaev needs to break the habit of the last two seasons, where a strong regular season was followed by a first-round playoff exit.

Last season

The regular season was a solid B+ for Salavat Yulaev, possibly even an A-. From start to finish the team was consistent, never suffering a skid longer than three games. On the other hand, the longest winning streaks were capped at five games but overall progress was smooth. That was good enough for third place in the East, just two points behind second-placed Avangard, and six clear of Ak Bars in fourth. Salavat Yulaev allowed just three more goals than Ak Bars, the most miserly defense in the East. And it was only four behind Lokomotiv and SKA, the leading teams through the regular season. Moreover, Viktor Kozlov’s team managed this while playing entertaining hockey. Maybe it wasn’t quite as gung-ho as Spartak, but the emphasis was definitely more on creativity than destruction.

Maybe Salavat peaked too soon. By mid-February the team was on a good run, enjoying a successful home stand against Lada, SKA, CSKA, Ak Bars and Avangard that brought a 19-9 goal differential. But then came three losses in a row at the hands of SKA, Lokomotiv and Dynamo Moscow, with a combined score of 1-8.

The playoffs sent Traktor to Ufa and the sixth seed won in six games. Most of those games were tight, with only a 4-1 win for Salavat Yulaev providing a decisive scoreline. The other five were even but Salavat’s excellent defense began to struggle – and that decided the outcome of the series.

In the end, the season was almost a copy of the previous year: a great regular season, but a first-round loss against a team that finished lower in the standings.

Recruitment

Departures:

Goalie: Ilya Ezhov (retired). Defensemen: Evgeny Biryukov (retired), Pavel Koledov (Avangard), Nicholas Meloche (Dinamo Minsk). Forwards: Danil Bashkirov (Metallurg), Ivan Drozdov (CSKA), Nikolai Kulemin, Vyacheslav Leshchenko (Neftekhimik), Ivan Manin (Buran, VHL), Denis Orlovich-Grudkov (Адмирал), Evgeny Timkin, Sergei Shmelyov (Admiral)

Arrivals:

Defenseman: Semyon Lugovyak (Metallurg Novokuznetsk, VHL). Forwards: Ilya Yepishchev (Burna, VHL), Sheldon Rempal (Henderson, AHL), Evgeny Sorokin (Metallurg Novokuznetsk, VHL),  Nathan Todd (San Jose, AHL), Artur Faizov (Ugra, VHL), Ilya Chmelevski (Estevan, SJHL)

Top 3 signings

Salavat Yulaev’s summer losses far outweigh the gains. The biggest of these is the departure of Ivan Drozdov to CKSA. His partnership with Josh Leivo and Alexander Chmelevski was a dominant force, scoring the lion’s share of goals. It was far more productive than any other line on the team. Drozdov’s replacement, in terms of importance to the team if not directly in terms of scoring, is Sheldon Rempal. He has scored at least 25 goals in each of his last three AHL seasons while also getting occasional NHL games for Los Angeles, Carolina, Vancouver and Vegas.

Nathan Todd, another Canadian, will also strengthen either the first or second line. He’s a center, a bit younger than Rempal and, unlike him, has no NHL experience. Interestingly, he comes to Ufa from San Jose, following Alexander Chmelevski’s path two years ago. Last season, Todd was the Barracuda’s leading scorer ahead of, among others, Avangard’s new signing Cole Kassels.

Artur Faizov, signed from Ugra, is just 18, but he already holds the rare distinction of scoring on his debut in the JHL and VHL. In the juniors, he went on to pot a hat-trick in his first game, while in the VHL he was the first player born in 2006 to score a goal. He’s probably not ready for a big role in the KHL yet, but has the potential to be a useful forward in the near future.

Coaching

In Nov. 2017, Viktor Kozlov took over at Metallurg after the departure of Ilya Vorobyov. Later, in Sep. 2020, he won three games out of three as interim head coach at Salavat Yulaev. Leaving those short spells aside, though, last season was only his second full campaign as head coach. And, as mentioned above, it was almost a replica of the first. As a result, Kozlov has two wildly contrasting sets of stats: 80 wins in 136 regular season games (58.82%) against just four in 12 playoff encounters (33.3%). Of course, 12 is too small a sample to mean much to a statistician, but that’s little comfort to fans in Ufa who want to see that strong regular season form carry into the Gagarin Cup campaign. It’s too early to talk about a consistent trend, but at the same time repeat losses against lower-ranked opposition cannot be ignored.

Goaltending

A year ago, when Salavat Yulaev traded Danil Aimurzin to Severstal in return for Alexander Samonov, it seemed like this wasn’t the best deal for them. And Aimurzin has kicked on effectively, immediately elevating his game to another level. But Samonov fully compensated for the loss of a talented center and was not only one of Salavat Yulaev’s heroes last term but also probably the best goalie in the regular season. But then, in the playoffs, he wasn’t at his best. It would be unfair to save that he let his team down, but at the same time he couldn’t save them from defeat either. Another factor: Alexander was injured and played through the pain barrier, a situation where the rest of the team needs to help out as much as possible.

Ilya Ezhov announced his retirement and now Samonov is the undisputed #1. His back is 21-year-old Semyon Vyazovoi, who played in the JHL Challenge Cup alongside Metallurg’s Ilya Nabokov two seasons ago.

Defense

After becoming the first man to play 1,000 KHL games, Evgeny Biryukov retired, but in recent seasons he no longer played a leading role. Now he will continue to contribute as a coach. Salavat Yulaev loses more with the departures of Nicholas Meloche and Pavel Koledov, and has only found Semyon Lugovyak as a replacement. Aged 26, Lugovyak has just 59 KHL games with limited ice time and, on the face of it, looks a better option for Toros than Salavat Yulaev. Right now, the defense looks understaffed and potentially this could cause problems.

Offense

In some ways, Rempal looks like a direct replacement for Drozdov, but they play very different styles. Rempal is more of a sniper and less inclined to do the dirty work, so it might be difficult to put him on a line with Leivo and Chmelevski in equal strength play. It’s combination that could easily prove less productive in reality than it might appear on paper. In pre-season, Kozlov used 23-year-old Yegor Suchkov with Chmelevski and partnered Leivo with Alexander Sharov, looking at Rempal and Todd with both combinations. Those players look set to take on the top six roles but it’s early to say exactly who will play where. Whatever the final line-up, it’s likely that we won’t see a repeat of last season’s big gap in numbers between the first and second lines and that can only help the team. In the bottom six there could be problems ahead. Much like on defense, the losses outweigh the arrivals. Even if restricted free agent Alexei Pustozyorov or unrestricted free agent Nikolai Kulemin return, there’s still a shortage of manpower here.

Youngsters

The lack of new signings suggests that Ufa might be planning to fill the gaps from within the club system. That would explain why Kozlov used an experimental roster in one pre-season game, sending out a team where more than a third of the players were born between 2001 and 2006. That team did well enough, winning the game 4-2. Of course, that doesn't mean that all of those youngsters will go on to play a lot of hockey in the KHL this season, but it signposts the planned course.

Even if Samonov remains healthy, Vyazovoi can look forward to 20 or so games. With a shortage of defensemen, Yaroslav Tsulygin and, possibly, Alexander Komarov could paly bigger roles. Up front, this summer saw a decent cohort of U23 players involved: Matvei Babenko and Sergei Kolesnikov already played in the KHL, and there are hopes for Maxim Velikov, Maxim Zagrebin, Artyom Nabiyev and the previously mentioned Faizov.

Expectations

Salavat Yulaev has a powerful core but the roster seems to lack depth. Even so, with an extra month of regular season play and a less stressful schedule, this might not be so damaging. Or, with a few injuries, it could be a real problem. If Salavat is lucky in this regard, it is more than capable of making the top four in the East once again. If that happens, the big playoff battle could be a psychological one: two failures against lower seeds is troubling, a third loss would indicate a trend.