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Petersburg club wins its first Russian Women’s championship

Agidel Ufa won the Russian Women’s Hockey League for the fourth time. In Sunday’s decisive game, a 3-2 win over Dynamo Neva was enough to clinch victory in the best-of-five series and regain the title it last won in 2021.

As the All-Star Game approaches, most teams in the WHL are about halfway through their season.

From the 2023-2024 season the Women’s Hockey League is lowering the requisite to consider its players Unrestricted Free Agents from 27 to 25 years of age.

The 2021-2022 Women’s Hockey League season was full of excitement – at both club and international level. While the Olympic Games dominated the global agenda, there was plenty to celebrate within the Russian championship, especially for KRS Vanke Rays.

A tense goaltending duel went the way of Noora Raty and the KRS Vanke Rays as the Russian Women’s Hockey League season came to its conclusion. The Dragons’ success seals a second title in three seasons for the Chinese franchise, while SKIF can take some consolation from a greatly improved season after falling at the final hurdle.

A late goal from Michela Cava gave the Vanke Rays a second victory in the Women’s Hockey League final. Now, the Chinese franchise can wrap up its second Russian title in three years with victory in its temporary Moscow Region home on Tuesday.

The Russian Women’s Hockey League began its final on Friday, with regular season champion SKIF Nizhny Novgorod hosting KRS Vanke Rays at the start of a best-of-five series. And the Vanke Rays got off to a winning start in their bid to win the title for the second time in three years.

The WHL final gets underway in Nizhny Novgorod on Friday, with KRS Vanke Rays back for its third successive appearance in the decisive series. This time, SKIF provides the opposition for the Chinese franchise, with the Nizhny Novgorod team making its first appearance in a playoff final.

It’s the biggest playoff in Russian Women’s Hockey League history, with eight teams ready to compete for the top prize. The action gets underway on Wednesday, and KHL.ru offers a rundown of all the key stories from the regular season.

Team ROC 2 Switzerland 4 (0-0, 1-1, 1-3)

Team ROC faces a rematch with Switzerland in the knock-out phase of the Women’s Olympic tournament in Beijing. A disappointing loss against previously winless Finland saw the team finish fourth in Group A. Thus, the Red Machine will take part in the only quarter-final that doesn’t involve an outside from Group B, which was comprised of the five lower-ranked teams in the tournament.

Team ROC women scored on Canada in Olympic play for the first time, but Monday’s game was overshadowed by controversy.

Saturday’s second game for our girls ended in a brave but heavy loss against powerful opposition.

The preparation was hugely disrupted. Several key players were isolating in hospital. Yet Team ROC rose above adversity to make a winning start to its Olympic campaign. Polina Bolgareva’s hat-trick led the win in a 5-2 success over Switzerland — and there are high hopes of more to come as the country bids for a first ever medal in women’s hockey.

When the Olympic hockey action gets underway this week, viewers could be forgiven for feeling they’ve seen a lot of this in Russian hockey in recent years. The Wukesong Arena, which will stage most of the women’s games, was the first home of Kunlun Red Star in the KHL, while Russia’s Women’s Hockey League supplies more players than ever to this year’s tournament. The entire Team ROC roster comes from the league, as does Team China. And there are plenty more with WHL connections lining up for their respective nations in this year’s competition.

Jokerit had to wait for their next game for a while after they had been through a few game postponements in January. When scanning the latest game results both Jokerit and Tuesday’s home team Dynamo had been doing pretty well.

The game was the first one for the Helsinki team in the year 2022 and Jokerit played in the home ice – without audience though, since the covid restrictions had emptied the stands in the turn of the year. These conditions shall last for at least couple of weeks.

After suffering a horrific loss against Barys Nur-Sultan, Dinamo Riga traveled to Ufa to meet with the local Salavat Yulaev team.

The new year of 2022 has arrived and it’s finally time to get back into game action. Dinamo Riga is back but in a troublesome situation.

The fourth and final meeting between Dinamo Riga and Torpedo Nizhny-Novgorod to close out the 2021 and to look for signs of things to come.

On the last game of the year for CSKA and Jokerit these two teams met each other in Moscow. After battling a few times quite recently the teams knew each other pretty well and they most likely knew what’ was ahead of them on the ice. Both earlier games were played in Helsinki and CSKA won them with a narrow margin.

After having won two in a row Dinamo Riga was set to take on a familiar face - Bob Hartley returned to Riga as the home team looked to extend their winning streak.

Kunlun Red Star had lost nine consecutive games and the reminder of the regular season didn’t matter that much to the team as the possibilities to get to the playoffs had gone away. Jokerit were in a much better situation, but also the Helsinki team had been losing a lot lately. Therefore Jokerit wanted to get back on track against the China based team.

After their short Christmas break Jokerit returned to the ice to face the reigning champion Avangard. The teams had competed once before in this season as back in September in Omsk Jokerit were better with score 3–2.

Christmas has been celebrated in the Latvian capital and now it was time to return to the hockey action.

A one-game road trip for Dinamo Riga saw them meet with their closest rivals in the standings - Vityaz Podolsk.

These two teams had their first match-up of the season just a week ago in Minsk. That time the home team was slightly better and took the points with them. Malte Strömwall was in a huge role with his three goals. Jokerit have been on a losing-streak and haven’t received a single point from their last three games. Dinamo had taken wins from their two most recent games as they’d beaten Jokerit and also Dinamo Riga.

The international break is over and it returns with a great one in Riga - the Dinamo derby between the Latvian and Belorussian sides.

On Monday the KHL continued after the break on which The Channel One Cup was played. Both Jokerit and CSKA had some players absent from the match due to variety of reasons – both injuries and rest after an intense tournament.

The international break is fast approaching and in the final game prior to it, Dinamo Riga was set to host Torpedo Nizhny-Novgorod.

It was to be the first time Dinamo and Jokerit faced each other in this regular season. Last season Jokerit didn’t fly to Minsk and did forfeit the points to the Belarussian team. This time Jokerit went and played the game.

Dinamo Riga continues their home stretch this time taking on guests from Podolsk.

Spartak and Jokerit had faced each other twice before in this regular season and in both times the visiting team has been victorious. The history was favourable for Jokerit, but it was the Friday’s game to decide, if the past times mattered in any sense.

Jokerit team captain Marko Anttila got selected to 2022 Fonbet KHL All-Star Game among his team mate Brian O’Neill. The event will be held in Chelyabinsk in the middle of January. Anttila has not been chosen to such role before, so he is excited about the opportunity.

After a short road trip, Dinamo Riga returned home to meet Amur Khabarovsk and begin their three-game homestand.

Severstal and Jokerit had played against each other once before in this regular season and that time Jokerit were stronger by numbers 4–1 in Helsinki. Since then both teams have been playing rather well, as Jokerit lead the western conference and Severstal were on the fifth spot.

No hiccups on the way to Balashika for Dinamo Riga as they arrived to end their two-game road trip this time taking on Avangard Omsk with a familiar face on the opposing bench - former Latvian national team coach Bob Hartley.

Jokerit got to start their four-game week at home ice as they faced Amur in Finland’s independence day match in Hartwall Arena. The Helsinki team had lost their most recent game against SKA in St. Petersburg, but still Jokerit had managed to take at least some points out of four of their five previous games.

After being stuck in the airport for many hours due to weather conditions - Dinamo Riga had finally arrived in Nizhny-Novgorod shorty prior to the game against Torpedo to begin their two-game road trip. Another hurdle to overcome but Riga knew their task at hand despite anything else going on.