Season review: Traktor. Groulx’s departure, an inconsistent regular season, and an early playoff exit
Round up
In the spring of 2025, Traktor fell to Lokomotiv in the Gagarin Cup Finals. Consequently, several key players departed the team: Maxim Shabanov and Vitaly Kravtsov headed overseas, Steven Kampfer called it a career, and Zach Fucale, Vladimir Tkachyov, and Charles Robinson also moved on. The club’s management, however, was highly productive in the transfer market. They landed one of the League’s brightest stars, Joshua Leivo, signed Mikhail Grigorenko, Jordan Gross, and Yegor Korshkov, and brought in Pierrick Dubé and Chris Driedger from North America.
The start of the season was less than ideal for Traktor. Throughout September, they alternated between wins and losses, and October followed a similarly unpredictable pattern. November proved to be the pivotal month for roster decisions: first, head coach Benoit Groulx departed, and just a week later, Chris Driedger’s contract was terminated, ending a Russian stint that was, to put it mildly, underwhelming for the goaltender.
Traktor lacked consistency during the regular season, dropping a 4:6 verdict to Amur only to crush the Shanghai Dragons 9:0 a week later. This captured the main paradox of their campaign: a finalist from the previous season, heavily reinforced over the summer, spent eight months searching for its identity without ever truly finding it. Despite a powerful late-season surge of four consecutive wins, they had already locked up the sixth seed in the East, setting up a first-round matchup against Ak Bars.
The series had no clear favorite, as Kazan had faced similar struggles throughout the year. The battle turned out to be fierce, even if the final 4-1 series score in favor of Ak Bars doesn’t reflect the intensity: four out of the five games were decided by a single goal, with three going to extra time. In terms of performance, Traktor certainly held their own, often dictating the play. However, Ak Bars proved far more clinical with their chances, and Dmitrij Jaskin’s OT winner in Game 5 officially sent Traktor into the offseason.
Top Players
67 games, 69 (29+40) points
While Leivo didn’t quite replicate his numbers from his Salavat Yulaev days, he still maintained a point-per-game pace and finished the season as the team's top scorer. He was also among the leaders for Traktor with a plus-12 differential. In the playoffs, Leivo tallied three goals and an assist, standing out alongside Kravtsov as one of the team’s most impactful players by driving the offense while reliably helping out in the defensive zone.
Mikhail Grigorenko
67 games, 64 (25+39) points
Grigorenko is an elite sniper by KHL standards, a reputation he reaffirmed with Traktor. He set personal regular-season records for both points and goals (59 points, 24 goals). Over the entire campaign, he led the team in game-winning goals (6) and recorded a 53.1% faceoff percentage, ranking second on the roster behind Alexander Kadeikin.
Grigory Dronov
57 games, 40 (14+26) points
Dronov established himself as the defensive anchor and a foundational player for the team, securing a spot on the top pairing while logging heavy minutes on both the power play and penalty kill. He proved equally effective at both ends of the ice. Grigory finished the season with the team’s best differential at plus-14. His absence due to injury in the playoffs was a key factor in the series loss to Ak Bars—had Dronov been in the lineup, the outcome might have been different.
Coaching
In his first KHL season, Benoit Groulx immediately led the team to the Gagarin Cup Finals. Although the start of the following campaign left much to be desired, the head coach's departure from the club came as a major surprise. Raphael Richer took over as interim coach for a few games before being succeeded by Evgeny Koreshkov, who finished the season at the helm. While some of Koreshkov’s tactical adjustments paid off—such as deploying Leivo at the blue line on the power play—he was unable to implement any fundamental changes to the team’s overall game.
Following the conclusion of the season, it was announced that Koreshkov would leave the club. True to form, management decided to stick with the North American approach, appointing Scott Gordon as the new head coach. His most recent coaching stint was with the Waterloo Black Hawks in the USHL.
Best Game
While there was no shortage of high-scoring, entertaining performances—including dominant wins over the Shanghai Dragons (9:0), Lada (6:1), Sochi (6:1), and Barys (6:3)—the away game against Amur on February 11 stood out for its pure drama. Traktor fell behind by two by the sixth minute and trailed 1:4 toward the middle of the middle frame. However, the team managed to tie the game before the second intermission, scoring three goals in just three and a half minutes. After trading goals in the third frame, Grigorenko sealed a spectacular comeback victory with a little over a minute left on the clock.
Young Players
Over the course of the campaign, Traktor utilized 15 young players. Several of them became permanent fixtures in the main roster, such as Arseny Koromyslov, Mikhail Goryunov-Rolgizer, and Alexander Rykov. Among the rookies who logged at least ten games, notable standouts included goaltender Savely Sherstnyov, defensemen Vladislav Yusupov and Yaroslav Fedoseyev, and forwards Artemy Nizameyev, Stepan Gorbunov, and Ruslan Aglamzyanov. Given new head coach Gordon’s extensive background in player development, these prospects are bound to get a solid opportunity to prove themselves in the upcoming season.
Offseason work
It is logical to assume that the team will place a strong emphasis on developing its young talent under the new head coach. So far, Traktor has avoided making any high-profile signings in the transfer market, though several departures have already occurred—with Leivo, Koromyslov, Kadeikin, Jordan Gross, and Logan Day all moving on. Earlier, during the club’s end-of-season press conference, general manager Alexei Volkov stated that Traktor would highly likely part ways with all of its foreign players and look for new ones. If management succeeds in properly reinforcing the roster, the team is fully capable of returning to the top four in the East.
