Season review: HC Sochi. Coaching carousel and a seventh straight spring without playoff hockey
KHL.ru starts its review of the 2025-2026 season for each team. It was already clear last summer that Sochi was heading into a difficult campaign. That proved to be the case, as the Black Sea club suffered 50 defeats and finished at the bottom of the standings.
Sochi last appeared in the playoffs in 2019. In 2020, the team finished ninth in the conference, but over the next five years they never came close to matching that result, ending up either second-from-bottom or last in the Western Conference while consistently remaining among the league’s bottom three teams overall. Those struggles ultimately led to a complete overhaul of the club’s management, although in hindsight, the changes may not have been worth making at all.
Things started going wrong from the very beginning of the offseason. After Sergei Zubov was dismissed, Vyacheslav Kozlov was appointed head coach, but he remained in the position for just over a month. Without ever taking charge of the team, he too stepped down. The search for a new bench boss dragged on for nearly another month before, in early August, 75-year-old Vladimir Krikunov was unexpectedly named head coach despite not having worked since January 2022.
The coaching carousel was only part of a series of puzzling personnel decisions. One of the club’s headline signings was Pavel Kudryavtsev, but his contract, like Kozlov’s, was terminated before the season even began after it emerged that health issues would keep him sidelined for another two to three months. Overall, Sochi’s roster losses were relatively minor, but there was little evidence of any significant reinforcement either.
Despite all the uncertainty, the Black Sea frachise made an energetic start to the season. They pushed Spartak hard in Moscow before falling 3:4, then edged Dynamo Moscow in a shootout, 3:2. Back home, Sochi shut out CSKA 2:0 and took a point from Traktor in a 3:4 overtime defeat. However, that early momentum quickly evaporated. Over the next 15 games, Sochi managed just two wins, both against fellow strugglers Lada. October was particularly bleak, as they lost every game, including one against Lada, and collected only a single point from an OT loss to Avtomobilist.
The club’s new management did not stand idle and attempted to turn things around. Krikunov moved into a consultant role, with Dmitry Mikhailov taking over behind the bench. Reinforcements arrived at every position: goalie Ilya Samsonov, who lacked recent game action but brought a Gagarin Cup title and nearly 100 NHL appearances to his résumé; defenseman Cameron Lee; and forwards Dmitry Kagarlitsky and Max Ellis. On paper, the additions looked promising. In reality, neither Samsonov nor Lee provided the expected boost, while Kagarlitsky and Ellis improved the offense without making the kind of impact that could fundamentally change the team’s fortunes.
In mid-February, Lada became the first team to lose even its mathematical chance of reaching the elimination stage. Just a week later, Sochi suffered the same fate. To make matters worse, during the closing weeks of the regular season the Black Sea club also surrendered second-last place in both the Western Conference and the overall standings to the Togliatti side, ultimately finishing at the very bottom of the league table.
Best players
Pavel Khomchenko
915 save percentage, 2.97 goals-against average in 50 games
Selecting a goaltender as the top player on a team that allowed more than 200 goals during the regular season may seem unusual, but Pavel Khomchenko performed his job admirably. In fact, he fared considerably better than most of Sochi’s defensemen, who must shoulder a significant share of the responsibility for those 200-plus goals against. Despite finishing last in the league, Sochi actually conceded fewer goals than both Admiral’s fellow strugglers, the Shanghai Dragons and Lada. Khomchenko was a major reason for that, even recording three shutouts over the course of the season.
Ilya Nikolayev
1+10 in 50 games
Among the defensemen, Khomchenko received the most support from Artyom Volkov and Ilya Nikolayev, who each blocked 90 shots. Nikolayev, who averaged more than 18 minutes of ice time per game, also managed a respectable rating of minus-3. Volkov’s mark was slightly worse at minus-9, but considering Sochi’s overall goal differential of -94, it was far from disastrous.
For comparison, imports Cameron Lee and Noel Hoefenmayer — players who might have been expected to set the standard — both finished at minus-24. While the international defensemen contributed offensively, they struggled to fulfill their primary defensive responsibilities.
Max Ellis
12+14 in 36 games
Although Sochi allowed fewer goals than the Shanghai Dragons and Lada, they scored fewer goals than any other team in the league — and by a considerable margin. Matvei Guskov and Daniil Seroukh led the club with 32 points each, yet neither finished among the top 100 scorers in the regular season. Ellis, who began the campaign with the Dragons and, for reasons that remain difficult to explain, failed to establish himself there, looked far more dangerous after arriving in Sochi. He played just over half of the season but averaged 0.72 points per game. That rate was comparable to players such as Daniil Gutik and Pavel Poryadin and even surpassed the production of Michael Vecchione and Dylan Sikura.
Head coach
The decision to hire Vladimir Krikunov looked like a gamble from the outset, and the results only reinforced that impression. Under his guidance, Sochi suffered 14 losses in 18 games, including three shutouts and three heavy defeats: 0:5 to Lokomotiv, 1:8 to SKA, and 2:8 to Dinamo Minsk.
In trying to correct course, the Black Sea club swung to the opposite extreme. Replacing the league’s oldest and most experienced coach was its youngest bench boss, 46-year-old Dmitry Mikhailov, who had never previously worked with either professional or junior-level teams. Mikhailov had built a strong reputation coaching youth teams within SKA’s system, but taking charge of a professional roster — and doing so directly in the KHL rather than working his way up through the VHL — was an entirely different challenge.
Mikhailov’s work in Sochi is difficult to evaluate. On the one hand, he was unable to improve the team’s results in any meaningful way. On the other, his complete lack of experience at this level is a significant mitigating factor. There were occasional stretches in which his players showed encouraging hockey, and it is entirely possible that, as he gains experience and the roster is strengthened, those flashes could eventually develop into something far more consistent.
Best game
One of those flashes of promise came on Dec. 28, when Sochi hosted SKA just before the New Year. The first half of the game turned into a wild offensive shootout. The visitors took the lead twice, the hosts responded by moving ahead three times, and by the 30-minute mark the crowd had already witnessed nine goals, with Sochi holding a 5:4 advantage.
The scoring frenzy then paused for the remainder of the second period, but Sochi was not finished. In the third, the team added three more goals to complete an emphatic 8:4 victory over one of the league’s most talented teams.
Young players
Ironically, Mikhailov’s appointment might have made far more sense a year earlier, when Sochi iced the youngest roster in the KHL. Over the course of last summer, the team’s average age increased by roughly two and a half years. While Sochi can hardly be described as a veteran squad, there is now very little youth left on the roster.
Seven players aged 23 or younger appeared in between one and 13 games, all in limited roles. The only youngster to receive relatively regular ice time was 20-year-old Fyodor Avramov, but even his season offered little to celebrate: 36 appearances, an average of seven and a half minutes per game, and two goals.
Summer work
Not long ago, rumors suggested that Sochi was facing serious financial difficulties. However, it appears the crisis has passed and the situation has stabilized. The club has already added two newcomers: Kirill Voronin from Dinamo Minsk and Artur Gizdatullin from Amur. In addition, Sochi acquired goalie Damir Shaimardanov and forward Kirill Slepets from Amur in exchange for blueliner Vasily Machulin.
None of the newcomers are superstars, but all should be useful additions. More importantly, this level of activity is not typically associated with a club facing severe financial problems, especially not within the first days after the market opens. The significance lies less in the size of the transactions than in the club’s willingness to actively participate.
That said, there is still plenty of work to be done. At present, Sochi have just eleven players from last season under contract, along with four newcomers. Three restricted free agents remain unsigned, while Avramov has received a qualifying offer. Considerable roster-building still lies ahead before the Black Sea club can begin preparing for the 2026-2027 campaign in earnest.
