Season review: Lokomotiv. Three straight finals, back-to-back cups
KHL.ru concludes its club-by-club review of the 2025/2026 season. Lokomotiv shrugged off a change in coaching and steamed to a second successive Gagarin Cup.
Although last summer’s championship roster was almost unchanged (a rare event in contemporary hockey), there was serious doubt about Lokomotiv’s status as tournament favorite back in the fall. That was due to a change of head coach, which will look at in more detail below. But right from the start, the Railwaymen set about dispelling those doubts: seven wins from 10 in September, with two of those losses in OT, then seven from 11 in October. In October, Lokomotiv’s power play showed a catastrophic loss of form – just one goal in 29 attempts (3.45%!) but even that barely slowed the team.
In November, the PP clicked once more but, paradoxically, results got worse. It wasn’t exactly a slump, but losses against lowly opposition like Barys, Amur, Shanghai Dragons and an off-color Dynamo Moscow were treated as sensations. That was Loko’s biggest crisis of the season and it didn’t last long. From Nov. 19 to Dec. 2, the team won just once, losing three in regulation and two more in OT. But from that point on, there were no more problems: occasional blips, but no back-to-back losses until the playoff semi-final.
Lokomotiv booked its playoff spot in early January with 13 games to play in the regular season. In the East, Metallurg’s similarly early success affected the team’s form in the closing weeks, Lokomotiv never relaxed. It won 17 of its last 20 games, and took another to a shoot-out.
Lokomotiv rode that wave into the playoffs. Round one was done in five games, Spartak’s only win coming in overtime. Salavat Yulaev was swept away in round two, failing to score in three out of four games. Then came a semi-final with Avangard, which had won both meetings in the regular season (1-4 on the road, 0-3 at home), albeit back in 2025. The hoodoo continued at the start of the series: Lokomotiv lost both home games before trading results in Omsk and returning home down 1-3 in the series. What followed was straight out of Hollywood. A shut-out win (4-0) in game five, then fightback overtime wins in games six and seven as Avangard twice blew two-goal leads.
The final against Ak Bars could not match that drama. For a time the series resembled a tug-of-war: Lokomotiv would get ahead, Ak Bars tied it up. That sequence ran for five games. Then, according to the schedule, Ak Bars should have won the sixth, but Lokomotiv took the verdict in Kazan and lifted the cup for the second year running.
Best players
Daniil Isayev
92.8% saves (1842 of 1985), 1.84 GAA in 78 games
It’s impossible to overstate Isayev’s contribution to his team’s success. On top of 12 shut-outs (five in the playoffs), he had a further 26 games with just one goal allowed and, in 24 of them, Lokomotiv took the win. Awards for playoff MVP and a place on the team of the season speak for themselves.
Daniil is not merely excellent, but consistently excellent. Since he become Loko’s first choice his stats have been elite across four seasons, whether playoff and regular figures are taken separately or combined: the GAA was never more than 1.94, his save ratio never fell below 92.4%. And those figures, which are Isayev’s worst numbers, would be regarded as very respectable – or even unattainable – for most goalies.
Alexander Radulov
27+42 in 86 games
It’s not easy to stay at the top aged 39. And to play on a strong team and win two championships is twice as hard. So to lead that team in scoring, at that age, is something incredible. Last season, Radulov was the missing piece of Lokomotiv’s puzzle; this time he played an even greater role in ensuring the puzzle did not fall apart.
Martin Gernat
13+23 in 86 games
Gernat was the leading scorer among Loko’s defensemen. But that was not at any cost to his principle role: only Alexander Yelesin had more than his 158 hits. But it was a plus/minus of +41 that really caught the eye – not just the best number among defensemen, nor among Lokomotiv players, but the top ranking in the entire league. With Gernat on the ice, Lokomotiv scored 75 goals and allowed just 34. And that doesn’t include special teams, which aren’t counted for plus/minus. Gernat was a leader on the PP as well, contributing to another 14 goals.
Coaching
For three years Igor Nikitin carefully refined his team, turning Lokomotiv into a battle train and setting it on the rails towards the Gagarin Cup. After his unexpected return to CSKA, Bob Hartley stepped onto the Lokomotiv footplate. It was a gamble: a proven coach, but one who had already stepped into retirement in 2021. Hartley’s rise was undoubtedly due to the passion with which installs his philosophy into his players. That strength could become a weakness when replacing Nikitin, a coach who favors meticulous planning and rigid systems.
Attempting to bend a championship team to your will is a recipe for trouble. But Hartley would not be Hartley if he didn’t try. His efforts met some pushback from a team full of champions who, to put it mildly, took a strong dislike to their new head coach. But this rarely affected results: Lokomotiv kept its place among the leaders, even without the dominance of the Nikitin era. Yet it seemed inevitable that the cold war between champion coach and champion players would boil over into open conflict – and one that would benefit neither party. Wisely, Hartley stepped back from the brink and stopped trying to remodel Lokomotiv in his own image. Thanks to this, he went on to win the cup with two different teams, while Loko won back-to-back titles under two different coaches.
Best game
After four games of the semi-final series, Avangard was up 3-1 and needed just one more win to advance. Lokomotiv won the fifth, but game six seemed to be going Omsk’s way. Avangard was just 33 seconds from reaching the final when Maxim Shalunov potted what looked like a consolation goal. But 22 seconds later he tied the game – and changed the course of the season. Neither team could win it in the first period of overtime, but in the second Rushan Rafikov gave Lokomotiv the game and tied the series.
Game seven followed a similar script, albeit with less drama. Loko was down 1-3 but Shalunov again reduced the deficit in the last minute – this time of the second period. Yegor Surin tied it up in the third and we went to double overtime again before Maxim Beryozkin sent the Railwaymen into the final.
Young players
For obvious reasons, it’s rare for young players to make an impact on champion teams and Lokomotiv is no exception. Only Avangard, Avtomobilist and Shanghai Dragons had an older roster than Lokomotiv this season. Of players born since 2003, only Yegor Surin has played more than half of Loko’s games – but he alone is worth several players, and not just youngsters. For the 19-year-old forward, this was a second full season in the KHL and he spent most of it alongside the veteran Radulov, with whom he shares an aggressive style. This blend of youth and experience on one line gave the Railwaymen a decent boost last season, even though on average Surin had less than 10 minutes’ game time each night. This time, his role increased. Surin clearly isn’t out of his depth in adult hockey, taking to it like a fish to water. He gets under the skin of the opposition, exerting psychological pressure and forcing errors.
And his gameplay isn’t too shabby either – he was fourth in goals (18) and points (45) for the team and his 37 regular season points set an all-time Russian record for a player under 20. In the last game of the Gagarin Cup final, Surin scored two of Lokomotiv’s three goals to beat Ak Bars and secure a second successive cup.
Offseason work
Much like last year, Lokomotiv has held on to most of its players. The departures are few in number, but greater in significance: imports Richard Panik and Byron Froese retired, while Gernat’s future remains unclear after his contract ended. The defenseman’s situation was similar last summer and in the end he stayed with Lokomotiv, but this time it seems he is more determined to get a shot at the NHL if possible.
As for Panik and Froese, it would be almost impossible to find adequate replacements on the Russian market, but their departures free up import slots and widen the pool of potential alternatives (the same also applies if Gernat does not return). Lokomotiv is not short of funds and can make high-quality signings, so it is unlikely that there will be any glaring holes in next season’s roster.
And, in place of the retiring (again!) Bob Hartley, Yaroslavl will be led by Dmitry Kvartalnov, who leads the league in games coached (1,038) and games won (636). Yet he has never won a Gagarin Cup, his playoff misfortunes becoming something of a meme. Returning to a Lokomotiv team seeking a third successive title could put him on a hiding to nothing: for a team to win three titles back-to-back with three different coaches is statistically implausible, yet if he fails the narrative will conclude: “Kvartalnov can’t even win with a champion roster.” Conversely, should he win, the achievement can be played down: “Anyone could win with that team.” Kvartalnov surely understands this very well, and deserves credit for taking on a potentially thankless task.
