Review of the Season. Severstal: Kozyrev’s second year and Aimurzin’s super-line

KHL.ru continues its club-by-club review of the 2024/2025 season with a look at Severstal. The Lynx made the playoffs for the fifth year straight while remaining one of the youngest teams in the league.

Since 2019, Severstal was the youngest team in the league for five successive seasons. That run began with the team missing the playoffs, but the four subsequent seasons saw Cherepovets join the battle for the Gagarin Cup. Moreover, they did this with little stress at the end of the regular season. The team finished seventh and sixth, and twice as high as fifth in the Western Conference. Nonetheless, each post season campaign ended in the first round.

Ahead of the 2024/2025 season, Severstal added a bit of maturity to the roster. The arrivals of Alexei Kruchinin and Yaroslav Dyblenko meant that this year’s team was slightly older than Sochi’s. That said, Dyblenko missed more than half the season through injury and played no role in the playoffs. The outcome was the same as in previous years: sixth place in the West, and defeat in round one.
For the second year in a row, that defeat came against Spartak. And, once again, it wasn't that close: five games -–and one period of overtime – proved sufficient for the Red-and-Whites. In the regular season, both Severstal and Spartak played very similar hockey and their head-to-head encounters were great fun to watch. In the playoffs, the Muscovites did a much better job of adapting their game to the specifics of post-season play, while Severstal’s top line suddenly went cold and failed to score a single goal.

Top Players

Danil Aimurzin
58 (31+27) points in 71 games

Aimurzin’s line didn’t just lead the way for Severstal, it was the most productive in the whole league with 42 regular season goals potted when all three forwards were on the ice. As the centerman, Danil was the nerve-center of the line and also led his team in goals and points. The overall impression of Aimurzin’s poweful campaign was blurred in the playoffs, where he managed just one assist through five games.

Kirill Pilipenkо
56 (30+26) points in 68 games

Pilipenko was just one goal behind Aimurzin in the regular season. And in the playoffs, he featured in just two games before dropping out of the line-up. At the time, there was no word of any injury and it seems that this was a coaching decision in response to a couple of substandard performances. Only after the end of the series did it emerge that Kirill was indeed injured and needed an operation. His absence was one of the main reasons why the first line ended up misfiring and the series came to a swift and unsuccessful conclusion.

Mikhail Ilyin
31 (7+24) points in 69 games

Although he scored rather less than Aimurzin and Pilipenko he was an indispensable part of that line. In particular, he was a big contributor in five-on-five play, and spending little time in the first power play unit.

Coaching

As a coach, Andrei Kozyrev is diametrically opposed to his approach as a player. He was a no frills defenseman, picking up more penalties than points. Yet as a coach, he gets his Severstal team playing with attacking combinations, building its game on puck control, passing and a strong forecheck while placing little importance on icings and hits. It looks great and, given his club’s small budget, he gets fantastic value for money. At least, in the regular season. In the playoffs, Kozyrev’s preferred style is less effective. But this is only his second year as a head coach in the KHL: as Andrei gains experience we can assume he will make the necessary adjustments. Moreover, at the press conference after the series loss against Spartak, Kozyrev accepted full responsibility for the defeat – an approach not common to all coaches. It’s a nice gesture in itself, but it also suggests that he acknowledges and understands where he’s going wrong. 

Best game

In the regular season, Severstal and Spartak were hard to separate – both teams won two of their four meetings. Each game was lively, especially the third. Severstal jumped to a three-goal lead in the first 10 minutes, only to find themselves tied midway through the second. After that, the Lynx got in front a further four times, and Spartak could only answer on three occasions. Allowing six goals in a game is far from ideal for any team, but it all added up to the most entertaining game of the season – possibly for any team in the KHL. 

Young players

We’ve already noted that an average age of 25 years and 38 days makes this the youngest roster in the KHL apart from Sochi’s. We also highlighted the contributions of Aimurzin and Ilyin among the 18 players aged 23 or under who featured this season. Of that group, eight featured in more than half the team’s games.

Among that youthful cohort, there were significant contributions from defensemen Vladimir Grudinin and Timofei Davydov. Among the forwards, Ivan Podshivalov, Ilya Ivantsov and Timur Manukhov stood out.

Summer progress

Kozyrev’s contract was extended back in April. At the same time, most of the key players, including Aimurzin and Pilipenko, were secured. That was no mean feat, since there was plenty of interest in both players from wealthier rivals. However, they’ll have to find a new linemate after Ilyin opted to continue his career in North America after signing a three-year entry-level contract with Pittsburg.

Elsewhere, Kruchinin is heading back to Torpedo, Andrei Churkin has signed for Sibir and Mark Barberio remains without a contract, but these are not critical losses. There are already new faces, and almost all of them have worked with Kozyrev before: Daniil Bokun and Danil Veryayev at Torpedo, Grigory Vashchenko and Nikita Kamalov at SKA-Neva, and Kirill Tankov at both SKA-Neva and SKA-1946. Alexander Zhabreyev, who couldn’t quite find a role at Severstal last season, is back for another try. The only entirely new face so far is Thomas Gregoire. He turns 27 in June and is arriving from Switzerland. Earlier, he led Quebec’s junior league in assists from a defenseman and was also the leading goalscorer from defense in the Finnish championship.