Season Preview. Lada: Move to the Western Conference and rebuilding the roster
KHL.ru continues its club-by-club preview of the 2025-2026 season. This summer, Lada moved from the Eastern Conference to the Western, and in terms of the number of newcomers brought in, they left everyone else far behind.
Last season
Two years ago, Togliatti’s team returned to the KHL after a six-year break and, contrary to numerous predictions that cast them as clear outsiders, immediately made the playoffs. That success automatically raised expectations for the 2024-2025 season, although it would have been more logical to assume that, without strengthening the roster, repeating the same result a second time in a row would be very difficult — and that strengthening never came.
Lada had a solid preseason, started the championship with two losses, which it then offset with two wins, and up until mid-November moved along at a steady pace — collecting exactly half of the possible points: out of 23 games it won ten and lost three more beyond regulation. That was enough to stay in the playoff zone; after a 1:3 loss in Ufa, Togliatti sat eighth in the East, just one point behind seventh with two games in hand.
Nevertheless, Oleg Bratash was dismissed, which did nothing to improve the situation — four consecutive defeats followed. Two of them, true, were only in the shootout, but Lada still fell out of the top eight. Vladislav Podyapolsky, by posting two shutouts in the next three games, briefly returned them to eighth place, but then he was injured and later even traded to Dynamo Moscow; thus, Togliatti successively lost the two main heroes of the previous season.
They continued the fight for the eighth spot, but two weeks before the end of the regular season, they lost even their theoretical chances of making the playoffs.
Recruitment
Lada is the undisputed leader this summer in terms of the number of incoming players, with no competition at all: runner-up Avangard has about ten fewer names in the “Arrivals” column. Of course, not all newcomers will secure a spot in the starting lineup, but the scale of acquisitions is still impressive.
Arrivals:
Goalies: Ivan Bocharov (Torpedo), Denis Popov (AKM, VHL). Defensemen: Maxim Belousov (Lokomotiv), Artyom Zemchyonok (SKA, trade), Nikita Zimin (Molot, VHL), Artyom Karpov (Lokomotiv), Alex Cotton (from Nitra, Slovakia), Oleg Popov (HK Norilsk, VHL), Yegor Rykov (Vityaz), Igor Safonov (Yuzhny Ural, VHL). Forwards: Daniil Anop (AKM, VHL), Danil Bashkirov (Avangard, trade), William Dufour (Colorado, NHL), Danila Dyadenkin (HK Norilsk, VHL, trade), Joshua Lawrence (Pelicans, Finland), Andrei Obidin (Avtomobilist), Vyacheslav Osnovin (Admiral), Gleb Petrov (AKM, VHL), Nikolai Polyakov (SKA, trade), Ilya Reingardt (Avangard, trade), Ivan Savchik (Vityaz), Riley Savchuk (KooKoo, Finland), Alexander Khokhlachyov (HC Sochi), Timofei Khokhlachyov (AIC, NCAA), Andrei Chivilyov (SKA)
Departures:
Goalie: Konstantin Volkov. Defensemen: Denis Barantsev, Nikolai Demidov, Marsel Ibragimov (Avangard, trade), Alexander Sevostyanov, Magomed Sharakanov (Dynamo Moscow, return from loan). Forwards: Rafael Bikmullin (Sochi), Nikolai Vladimirov, Alexander S. Volkov (Lokomotiv, return from loan), Artyom Ivanyuzhenkov, Anthony Camara, Pavel Koltygin, Danila Moiseyev (CSKA), Arkhip Nekolenko (Sibir), Nikita Popugayev (Shanghai Dragons), Mikhail Fisenko (Ak Bars), Yegor Chernikov (Avtomobilist).
Top 3 Signings
For forward William Dufour, the 2021-2022 season was a breakout one. Scoring 56 goals and putting up 116 points in the QMJHL, he finished as the league’s top goal scorer and the second-leading point producer of the regular season (just three points behind the leader). He was named MVP of both the QMJHL and the Memorial Cup tournament—where he was also the top scorer and lifted the trophy with his team. He also won the World Junior Championship (on the same Canadian roster as, for example, Connor Bedard). But after moving to the pro level, Dufour’s scoring numbers steadily declined year by year, and moving to Europe looks like a logical attempt to reset his career.
His fellow countryman Joshua Lawrence hasn’t played pro hockey in North America at all—straight after graduating from the QMJHL he moved to Switzerland, then Finland. Still, what stands out most is his final junior season in Quebec, when he played alongside Dufour. Most of William’s goals came off Lawrence’s passes (he registered 70 assists and shared first place among the league’s top playmakers). So, bringing in these two forwards is essentially reviving a very successful partnership.
Andrei Chivilyov is a little older than Dufour and Lawrence, but his own “career season” came a year later, when he shined with Neftekhimik (13+18 in 68 games). That performance caught the attention of SKA, though moving there may have been a mistake. Last season he was loaned to Vityaz, where he came close to his Neftekhimik-2023 level, earning time on both the power play and the penalty kill. He still looks fully capable of further progress.
Coaching
Pavel Zubov, who replaced Bratash during last season, has remained on the staff, while the new head coach is Boris Mironov. In the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons he twice led Spartak, overseeing a total of 82 games and winning 38 of them, including five in the playoffs (one victory). He also previously coached Krasnaya Armiya in the MHL, Zvezda in the VHL, and worked as an assistant with Neftekhimik and Traktor.
Goalies
After the departure of Vladislav Podyapolsky, Alexander Trushkov became Lada’s number one. With him in net, Togliatti didn’t win many games, but most losses were not really his fault; he even posted four shutouts, and overall handled his duties fairly well. Ivan Bocharov has been brought in as his partner. A few years ago, he left Dynamo Moscow in search of a new challenge, which didn’t really work out: he lost the competition to the then up-and-coming Daniil Isayev and went from starter to backup. His move to Torpedo changed little—he got more ice time, but once again lost the battle for the crease, this time to Ivan Kulbakov. Now in Lada, another test awaits him.
Defense
Lada’s top-scoring defenseman from last season, Magomed Sharakanov, returned from loan to Dynamo Moscow. Among those who averaged more than 15 minutes of ice time, only Maxim Berezin, Yevgeny Kalabushkin, and Vladislav Syomin remain. Significant reinforcements have arrived in Artyom Zemchyonok and Yegor Rykov, as well as in Alex Cotton, an offensively-minded blueliner who averaged close to a point per game at the junior level in the WHL before traveling around Europe, making stops in Finland, Sweden, and Slovakia before landing in Togliatti.
Forwards
Up front, very stiff competition is expected, since the large influx of newcomers didn’t arrive to fill vacant spots: of the seven top scorers from last season, only Arkhip Nekolenko and Nikita Popugayev are gone. All the others will have to prove themselves in battles against the likes of Dufour, Lawrence, Chivilyov, as well as preseason standouts Danila Dyadenkin, Andrei Obidin, Vyacheslav Osnovin, Ilya Reingardt, Ivan Savchik, Riley Savchuk, and Alexander Khokhlachyov. It all seems a bit excessive, and it’s likely that some players will eventually have to be let go.
Prospects
At the Minsk tournament, Mironov tested defensemen Maxim Belousov, Karim Vafin, Daniil Zhurakov, and Igor Safonov, along with forwards Ilya Reingardt and Oleg Senkin. All of them, except for Vafin, managed to register points, with Reingardt (2+1) even tying Danila Dyadenkin for second place among Lada’s scorers. Still, the overall direction suggests that youth won’t be heavily involved in the team this season.
What to expect
A new head coach and an enormous influx of newcomers clearly point to a large-scale—if not outright complete—rebuild of Lada. The move from the Eastern Conference to the Western adds another twist to these changes, meaning that comparisons with last season or the one before it no longer make much sense. The rebuilt Lada will almost certainly look very different from its predecessor, though whether that’s for better or worse remains to be seen.
The Minsk tournament didn’t provide much clarity: a confident win over Admiral (5:1, while playing second fiddle), an even battle with the hosts (2:3 in a shootout), and a crushing defeat to Metallurg (0:6). It’s quite possible that during the adjustment process Lada will experience similar ups and downs in the championship itself, and their final result could end up anywhere from fifth–sixth in the conference to ninth–tenth.
