Season review: SKA. Five big wins but the CSKA curse continues

KHL.ru continues its club-by-club review of the 2025/2026 season. SKA, in a permanent state of reconstruction, left the playoffs in the first round for the second year in a row. That hasn’t happened since 2010.

In 2024/2025 СКА lost in the first round for the first time in 10 years and that prompted big changes – not just on the roster (which was largely expected since SKA seems to undergo some kind of rebuild every summer), but also in the management.

Accordingly, the team’s status declined. For perhaps the first time in the KHL era, SKA went into the season without being regarded as one of the favorites. Nonetheless, an opening loss to Shanghai Dragons was a sensation – not just for the 4-7 scoreline but because of the subtext: over the summer the rebranded Dragons moved from Mytishchi to St. Petersburg and immediately took up residence at the SKA Arena, while SKA itself returned to the smaller Ice Palace.

For the next couple of months, SKA struggled to find its game. Good performances were followed by bad ones. By November, at last, things clicked. Prior to that SKA found itself outside the playoff spots but the players hauled themselves back up. It wasn’t easy: eight games in a row were decided by a single goal, SKA winning five of them. In late December there was another stumble, then in mid-January a real slumo – seven successive losses and eight games without a win in regulation.

The slump was replaced with a comparable hot streak – seven wins from nine games, with the two losses coming in shoot-outs. And even when that ended, March went well as the team seemed to hit form at the right time for the playoffs.

The finish was exciting. On the last gameday, depending on different combinations of results, SKA could end up anywhere from fifth to eighth in the standings. In the end, it got the highest possible position – but perhaps not the best outcome since it set up a playoff match-up against CSKA. This has become a defining rivalry of the modern era: from 2012 to 2023 they met eight times in the playoffs, with the last six of those series going to the Muscovites. And now its seven. SKA managed to eke out just one 1-0 victory, losing the other four games. And the last of those, with everything on the line, ended in a comprehensive 2-6 reverse.

SKA’s last two seasons ended up almost identical. 2025 brought 82 points in the regular series and a 2-4 loss in the first round. In 2026 it was 81 points (albeit with a higher finishing position) and 1-4 in the playoffs. But, objectively speaking, last year’s team was stronger and the poor result was a shock; this time it was predictable.

Best players

Sergei Plotnikov
18+32 in 66 games

Plotnikov is used to being a real leader on and off the ice. It’s not unusual for him to change the course of a game and while he is aging (he turned 36 a couple of weeks ago) he matched his personal best for a regular season, this team scoring 47 points in 61 games rather than 65 in 2023.
During the season, Plotnikov joined the elite band of players to reach 1,000 KHL games. Only five others have reached that landmark.

Marat Khairullin
19+33 in 72 games

Plotnikov missed a few games through injury and that might be the reason why Khairullin finished the season as SKA’s scoring leader, ahead by two points. This doesn’t diminish Marat’s importance to the team. He had more game time than any other forward (and only two D-men played more), including on the PP and PK as part of the first special team.
It's hard to overstate his importance to SKA, making it hard to explain why his contract was not extended before it expired at the end of the season. Now Marat is joining CSKA.

Artemy Pleshkov
93.4 % saves (989 of 1059), 2.17 GAA in 35 games
and Sergei Ivanov
92.8 % saves (946 of 1019), 2.43 GAA in 31 games

Not for the first time, SKA went with youthful goaltending – Pleshkov turned 23 in October, Ivanov was 22 in April. Both of them made mistakes from time to time, and sometimes serious ones. But that was only an occasional problem; for the most part they were reliable. Artemy’s GAA was bettered only by Dmitry Gamzin and Daniil Isayev, and his save ratio was the best among goalies with more than 30 appearances.

In the regular season, Pleshkov and Ivanov had an almost even share of the game. Pleshkov got the start for the playoffs. In the first game, despite defeat, he played well but struggled in the second. Thus Ivanov took over for game three and blanked CSKA to claim SKA’s only victory in the series.

Coaching

Going back to that final game against CSKA, with everything on the line, we had to acknowledge that despite a 2-6 loss the Petersburg team had a significant advantage in time on offense and vastly more puck possession, yet managed one shot on goal less than the Muscovites. That’s not a paradox, not an unhappy accident, but a direct consequence of Igor Larionov — a genius as a player – and his tactical inflexibility. And that’s only half the problem. It also seems that Igor Nikolayevich doesn’t see this as a weakness. His famous “We have no Plan B!” feels more like empty bravado than commitment and consistency. Certainly, until it’s backed up by achievements – and Larionov has yet to win much as a coach.

In the interests of fairness, there are some successes, albeit with caveats. First, his smart work with emerging prospects moves them to a higher level. The caveat here is that SKA’s system has done this effectively enough and the system is stacked with talented youngsters.

Second, the aesthetics of the Larionov school are great to watch; effectiveness is another matter, and does not always come hand-in-hand. When it does, the impact of his assistants is clearly visible. In particular, Larionov’s Torpedo was much less effective after Andrei Kozyrev’s departure; Larionov’s SKA, meanwhile, improved when Yury Babenko and later Leonids Tambijevs joined the staff. Babenko filled in for Larionov during his absence and won all three with few problems – a revenge verdict against Shanghai Dragons, victory over eventual Gagarin Cup finalist Ak Bars and a straightforward 3-0 success against SKA’s eventual playoff nemesis CSKA. The third occasion was downright absurd. Larionov missed two games in December due to illness, but in February he just upped and went to the Olympic finals. There were 10 games left in the regular season, SKA was in seventh place, three behind sixth and just one clear of Spartak in eighth. Factor in the prestige attached to any game against CSKA and it is baffling that the head coach should leave on “important business”. It felt like a no-win situation: victory in the coach’s absence makes him seem less significant; blame for a defeat falls squarely in his lap. What motivated this decision? It’s a mystery.

Best game

In the regular season, SKA had five wins by big scorelines. Only Dinamo Minsk, with 11, had more. Four of them were against fairly weak opposition (6-1 vs Lada, 8-1 vs Sochi, 5-0 and 7-0 vs Barys), but few other teams managed to record such scorelines. And the fifth came against a Severstal side up in third place in the West at the time (SKA was in seventh going into the game) and seven points clear of SKA. This was a meeting of Larionov and his former assistant Andrei Kozyrev, now behind the bench in Cherepovets. Kozyrev chose to rest his first-choice goalie Alexander Samoilov, which might explain how his players allowed five goals. But at the other end, one of the KHL’s more effective attacks was unable to score on Pleshkov at all.

Young players

As mentioned, SKA has plenty of bright prospects in its system and Larionov is good at developing them. This year’s stand-out was 20-year-old Matvei Korotky (14+14 in 48 матчах). He had featured in the first team before Larionov’s arrival and this season he did not merely consolidate but became one of the more significant forwards.

Unfortunately, injuries cost Matvei more than a third of the regular season. That enabled Matvei Polyakov (16+13 in 68) to outscore him. Although he’s a year older, Polyakov had played just once before this season, making 2025/2026 his debut campaign. In the end, he tied Alexander Zharovsky for goals by rookies and shared second place in the points race (again, among rookies) with Danil Pivchulin. He was also nominated for the Rookie of the Year award.

Compared with Korotky and Polyakov, Nikita Nedopyokin’s numbers (3+4 in 55) weren’t so eye-catching. But his role is different, and he did a lot of the team’s heavy lifting this season. Ignat Lutfullin and Vladislav Romanov were also noteworthy and might have seen more action on a team with less competition for places on offense. Sergei Ivanov was discussed above.

As well as all these, SKA has several slightly older players – 23 or 24 years – who also made good progress this season. Larionov deserves much of the credit for this.

Off-season work

SKA’s rebuild continues, although there are relatively few newcomers yet. Almost all of them are on defense: experienced former Metallurg man Alexei Maklyukov, 22-year-old Arseny Varlakov from Torpedo’s system. Vladislav Syomin, recently of Lada, returns as a free agent to the club where he began his career.

There’s only one attacking arrival so far, but that was one of the more talked-about trades of the summer. Vasily Atanasov emerged in the KHL under Larionov at Torpedo. For him (and Varlakov), SKA paid money and traded Polyakov. Torpedo also acquired free agent Mikhail Vorobyov after he was not offered a new deal.

There will surely be further signings, especially on offense, and they will likely be of a similar level to Atanasov. Judging by last summer, we can expect news a bit later: last year Brennan Menell and Trevor Murphy signed in mid-July with Nikolai Goldobin arriving in late August, not long before the start of the season. Off the ice, we also learned that next season the team will return to the SKA Arena.