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Brampton, Ontario native Tyler Graovac arrived to Minsk by his own description “like a kid in a candy shop.” But make no mistake—Dinamo head coach Craig Woodcroft’s approach is far from sugarcoated. The all-business bench boss does not conceal his desire to dominate, a quality that Graovac admires in his new leader.

Four seasons ago, I met a team called Kunlun Red Star in the basement of Balashikha Arena. It was my first-ever assignment in hockey, and my memory of that night is more vivid than of hundreds more that followed. Among the names on my agenda was Brandon Yip, a 2004 Colorado Avalanche draft pick who found himself at the helm of a fledgling hockey club in Shanghai. Years of being pushed around by traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange could never have prepared me for this confrontation with my childhood dream of hockey reporting.

Vityaz Podolsk forward Daniel Audette was told that his game was well-suited to Europe. A top-five producer on the Western Conference’s last place team, he has lived up to expectations in spite of the headwinds facing his squad. A second-generation professional hockey player, Audette admits that he once dreamt of being a goaltender, a position he now terrorizes as one of the KHL’s top point snipers. During his father’s tenure with the Montreal Canadiens, he spent time in close proximity to one of the best netminders in hockey history.

Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod winger Kenny Agostino is one of the KHL’s leading goal scorers, but he admits that it is not an achievement secured alone. Aside from high-octane linemates Damir Zhafyarov and Andy Miele—two impressive flanks for a debut season—there is one other contributor that deserves honorable mention, and that is Agostino’s sister.

Helsinki and Saint Petersburg have more in common than their fanbases would like to admit—blustery coastlines on the Baltic, historic connections with Peter the Great, and at one time, even club ownership. In the old adage, “keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” Jokerit and SKA have succeeded on geographic and managerial grounds—but now they share one more legacy, perhaps to Helsinki fans’ chagrin. It is none other than Mikko Lehtonen, a lethal two-way defenseman who will soon suit-up for the Army Men.

Averaging over a point per game, Salavat Yulaev forward Markus Granlund has maintained momentum after a breakout debut season. Tasked with filling the shoes of Linus Omark—a longtime leader and staple on Ufa’s top line—Granlund entered the turbulent 2020-21 KHL season with a heavy set of expectations. Rising to past glories without Omark aside, the team would be forced to deal with extended departures, curtailed preseason preparations and much more.

Torpedo bench boss Dave Nemirovsky had over 200 international games on VHS and beta growing up, a masterclass in Red Machine style and predominance. While his parents and brother were born in the USSR, the 1994 Florida Panthers draft pick had never stepped foot on Russian soil until he moved his career to the Russian Superleague in 2001. It was a heritage that always fascinated the future KHL coach, and one that comes alive each time his roster touches the ice.

It’s one thing to meet your childhood idol—the player whose jerseys and cards filled the drawers of your room, and whose inspired actions you memorized, perhaps even repeated in your dreams. But to cover for your idol in the defensive zone is something else entirely, an opportunity that left SKA veteran forward Anton Burdasov in shock when it arrived.

For some members of the hockey community, coaching is an inevitable destiny—a calling that runs through their veins perhaps even before a playing career has concluded. Metal-lurg Magnitogorsk bench boss Ilya Vorobyov is one such example, the son of a longtime KHL and National Team coach who absorbed his father’s training principles long before he ruled a bench of his own.

There is a legend inside of the Tretiak family that goes something like this.

“Are you nervous, or is something going on with your family?”

Bobsled’s loss was hockey’s gain.

Dr. Craig Slaunwhite contemplated a unique career prior to his emergence in the field of peak athletic performance—competitive bobsledding, a seamless fit for the former college decathlete. His fast track to Cool Runnings came to a halt when a coaching offer from the Florida Panthers arrived. It is now the tease of a path not taken—one that crosses the NHL and NBA performance guru’s mind from time to time

Dinamo Minsk experienced a cultural overhaul in the 2020-2021 season, and not even a pandemic would derail the club’s efforts toward expansion. Under head coach Craig Woodcroft, a spotlight was shone on young Belarusian talents brought home from abroad, ballasted by imports with some serious KHL mileage. Defenseman Vladislav Yeryomenko, 22, was one such local youngster who witnessed the drastic change in fortune, which catapulted Minsk from one of their worst showings to playoff position in a matter of one season.

In late May, Denmark delivered its first-ever victory over Sweden at the IIHF World Championship. It was a milestone almost exclusively achieved by Jokerit forward Nicklas Jensen, who registered a hat trick and an assist to seal the upset. His breathtaking performance impressed even the toughest of coaches, a Toronto-born import to Herning in the 1990s. His name is Dan Jensen, but he’s better known as dad.

Sergei Zubov is my favorite variety of Russian star, forged in the white heat of CSKA training camps and tested under the fierce gaze of hockey’s toughest coaches, from Viktor Tikhonov to “Iron Mike” Keenan. Despite back-breaking pressure and unbending leadership, the Hall of Fame defenseman’s creativity was irrepressible, an innate brilliance that always found an outlet—even in the hottest of furnaces.

While the “Siberian Snipers” stands among the best team names in professional hockey, Dmitry Ovchinnikov could own the title himself. The eighteen-year-old forward from Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai—a city nestled between Russia’s Mongolian and Chinese borders—averaged over a point per game this season, his arresting speed and inch-perfect shot just two weapons in a well-rounded arsenal. With production numbers that put him in the realm of Nikita Gusev, Alexander Barabanov and Nikita Kucherov in their junior years, the youngster would have every right to brag—but he did not take the opportunity. Novosibirsk narrowly missed a shot at postseason play, a disappointment that Ovchinnikov puts on his own shoulders.

Darren Dietz is one of the most dedicated ambassadors Kazakhstan could have ever asked for, whether he’s selling the country’s ecological diversity or leading a Cinderella start for the National Team at Worlds. The twenty-seven-year-old captain of Barys Nur-Sultan calls his second passport a gift for which he is extremely proud, and shared a snippet of his adventures across the world’s largest landlocked country.

Here’s the pitch: both Nick and Shelby are hockey players, the latter in early talks to represent the new women’s team in Chelyabinsk, which applied to join the WHL for the 2021-22 season.

Kirill Marchenko is an artist, but he refuses a likening to Picasso. He’s the mastermind behind the KHL’s best goal of the Western Conference Finals, but his own stores of creativity took the youngster by surprise. The only place SKA Saint Petersburg’s talented winger seems to accept comparisons is on the pitch—and although he claims to lack soccer talent, he selects the Bun-desliga’s leading hat trick scorer as his closest player comparable.

In the modified words of Drake—he started from the bottom of the Eastern Conference, and now he’s here.

When Robert Rooba signed with Severstal Cherepovets this week, he became the first Estonian player in the history of the KHL. The twenty-seven-year-old forward hopes that his hard-fought milestone will light the runway for future generations of hockey talent.

Sergey Kalinin won World Juniors, Worlds, the Gagarin Cup and Olympic Gold before the age of 30. He has gone to the KHL Finals with both teams participating in this year’s clash, a tidbit he claims to have forgotten until our catchup over the weekend. The seasoned veteran and NHL alum walked into the Traktor Chelyabinsk locker room this summer as captain, and posted one of his best-ever performances on the Eastern Conference Cinderella squad. Traktor climbed from bottom-feeder to playoff contender, a metamorphosis Kalinin described as “perestroika” before the 2020-2021 campaign even began.

Jokerit Helsinki and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl have met 20 times in the past two seasons. In spring of last year, the Jokers reigned supreme over Mike Pelino’s squad—but COVID-19 derailed their playoff hopes. The Railway Men exacted their revenge this March with a decisive first-round victory, including two shutouts for chart-topping netminder Eddie Pasquale. According to Jokerit head coach Lauri Marjamäki, the results yielded no room for interpretation.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Though written over one hundred years ago, Charles Dickens’ immortal words accurately summarize the about-face that Dinamo Minsk has recently sustained—from their worst-ever performance in franchise history to their first playoff appearance in years. Against the backdrop of sizable personnel changes and a global pandemic, head coach Craig Woodcroft oversaw Dinamo’s transformation from bottom-feeder to playoff contender. With the assistance of Mikhail Grabovski and Pavel Perepekhin, the troika lured a sizable contingent of promising Belarusian youngsters away from North America, rounding out the locker room with battle-tested KHL imports including Rob Klinkhammer and Brandon Kozun. The team finished the regular season seventh in the West, falling to powerhouse SKA Saint Petersburg in the first round of the playoffs. Their upgrade in the standings was predicated on a seismic overhaul of team culture.

Red Army goaltender Lars Johansson is a regular at the top of the leaderboard. His consistency was often overshadowed by high-profile prospect Ilya Sorokin, but with the latter’s departure for North America, Johansson has continued to backstop CSKA to success. If Red Army should repeat this season without Sorokin between the pipes, the Swedish netminder will receive a spotlight he has long deserved—although humbly never sought.

In February of 2019, I took a walk with Alexei Kovalev in the Forbidden City of Beijing. We wound through throngs of visitors—an experience hard to reimagine in the throes of a pandemic—low fog shrouding the roofs of imperial palaces that stood for six centuries. Kunlun Red Star had just relocated to the Chinese capital after several seasons in Shang-hai, a long-awaited homecoming that would be astoundingly short-lived. A future venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Shougang Arena had finally opened its doors to the displaced Dragons, a modern complex on the site of an old steel plant experiencing a renaissance ahead of the Games. We could never have imagined then—finally able to explore a home the team scarcely knew—that Kunlun would be exiled from Beijing three more times.

In life, real estate and hockey, timing is everything. A team that peaks at the right moment can swiftly dethrone a steady contender. Metallurg Magnitogorsk found its stride with about twenty-five games left in the regular season, quickly ascending the Eastern Conference and recently blanking league leaders Ak Bars Kazan. Defenseman Philip Holm has equally timed the perfect entrance, joining Ilya Vorobyov’s defensive core in December as the team prepared to launch.

I have only spoken once with Viktor Tikhonov, Jr., but here is something of which I’m sure: his courage is off the charts. If you know anything about his grandfather’s coaching legacy, then perhaps you will recall footage of the Soviet National Team pooling sweat in the gym of an army barracks, alternating Olympic lifts with calisthenics and sprints for hours on end. Superior athletic conditioning underpinned the ferocious Red Machine, a team that won thirteen-straight Soviet titles, eight World Championships and three Olympic Gold Medals under his watch. So when renowned coach of the USSR Viktor Tikhonov invited his grandson to the gym, perhaps anyone else in their right mind would have passed.

Mike Pelino knows what it takes to lead a powerhouse, whether we consider his two Gagarin Cup championships at Metallurg, or the 100,000 honey bees he has wrangled all summer in the backyard. While the Ontario native was certain that he would not return to Russia at the end of last season—the glimmer of glory, and a reunion with head coach Ilya Vorobyov, caused the KHL mainstay to change his tune. Not literally, of course, as the karaoke clubs in Magnitogorsk will soon discover—both Vorobyov and Pelino are regulars, a tradition begun with “Iron Mike” Keenan seven years ago.

“It was an honor to get killed by you.”

No, this is not a line from Braveheart that you’ve simply forgotten, nor the last uttered words of a slain samurai. Odysseus did not make this remark, and Napoleon had no such sentiment for General Kutuzov upon his retreat. These are the words Semyon Der-Arguchintsev shared with Pavel Datsyuk after having the wind knocked out of him in the third period of Torpedo’s clash with Avtomobilist.

Eddie Pasquale was sidelined for the first month of the season, but you would not know it from his performance. Lokomotiv’s goaltender leads the league in shutouts (4) and goals against average (1.33), trailing only Traktor’s Ivan Fedotov in save percentage (94.4 to Fedotov’s 94.8). Despite COVID-19 roster changes and a recent dry stretch against tough opponents, Lokomotiv sits third in the competitive Western Conference. Andrei Skabelka’s roster is within striking distance of SKA, and has one of the league’s best netminders to anchor their playoff push.

Steph Klein has been obsessed with hockey equipment since childhood. Her main motivation for playing in net was the influx of gear she’d get to admire, from color-coordinated pads to custom masks that double as works of art. One object of obsession growing up was Alexei Kovalev’s AK-27 Warrior stick. The irony is that Steph Klein debuted as the KHL’s first female equipment manager on Thursday night, for none other than Alexei Kovalev’s Kunlun Red Star.

Traktor Chelyabinsk newcomer Pontus Åberg is not used to this much free time. A quintessential “girl dad” who has been separated from his daughter Molly since the summer, the Swedish forward finds himself playing more Fortnite these days as he awaits the arrival of his number one fan. As COVID-19 travel restrictions ease to allow family members across the border, the Åberg duo will soon be reunited.

Hunter Shinkaruk’s father took a job as the dentist of the Calgary Hitmen, a local junior team, to bring his son closer to the game he loved. Proximity proved a powerful motivator—the Kunlun Red Star forward and Vancouver Canucks draft pick launched a career that has spanned fourteen time zones and over 5,000 miles. Despite a tumultuous start to the season for the Dragons, Shinkaruk has found an individual rhythm, logging five points in ten games despite a fourteen-day quarantine and late arrival.

Dmitry Samorukov hails from a sporting dynasty—and in the vein of European ruling families of centuries past, his marriage to hockey royalty only further solidified the bloodline. Samorukov’s father Andrei was a professional soccer goalkeeper for nearly two decades, and while athletic prowess did not skip a generation, his youngest son preferred ice to turf.

From FaceTime coaching between periods to players missing in double digits—Salavat Yulaev head coach Tomi Lämsä could never have imagined a year like 2020. The former head coach of Jokerit Helsinki was newly promoted to the helm of Ufa’s bench, having served as an assistant coach for the past three seasons. The lessons he has learned under Russian leadership have changed the way he coaches one of the KHL’s most dominant teams—combining local hockey culture with a Finnish perspective on team-building and unity.