Russian Superleague Quarterfinals
The
road of the ’03 Russian Super League playoffs turned out to be a windy one,
Advertisement
but in the end lead to the expected destination – Yaroslavl. Last
year’s champion and heavy favorite to repeat, Lokomotiv Yarosalvl, met this
year’s most pleasant surprise, Severstal Cherpovets, in the finals, with Yaroslavl
taking the best of five series in four games. However, I am getting ahead
of myself, so let’s start from the beginning and take a look at every twist
and turn of this year’s playoffs.
QUARTERFINALS:
#2
Severstal Cherpovets vs. #7 Metallurg Magnitagorsk (Severstal wins series 3:0)
Severstal
Cherpovets has
been one of the biggest suprises of the 2002-03 Super League season. The team
has been consistently making the playoffs, but has never been able to overcome
the powerhouses of Russian hockey, such as Ak Bars Kazan, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl....and
Metallurg Magnitagorsk. Things went very different for the two teams this season.
Severstal put together a strong roster, with the depth that rivaled that of
Lokomotiv, especially on the blue line. The team spent most of the
year on the top of the rankings, finishing the regular season second only to
Lokomotiv. The team benefited greatly from the breakthrough of a couple
of up and coming stars, Yuri Dobryshkin (Atlanta Thrashers), who has already
proven in the previous years to be a gritty checking forward on Kazan’s third
line, and Yuri Trubachev (Calgary Flames), the captain and scoring leader of
Russia’s gold medal winning squad at the 2003 U20 WJC. Both Dobryshkin
and Trubachev experienced declines in their games after the strenuous winters,
where they had to manage both national team and club duties. However,
both came back strong in the last few games of the season and came into the
playoffs fresh and ready to compete.
Metallurg
Magnitagorsk seemed
to be primed for another strong season in the beginning of the 2002-03 season.
However, the team experienced a rude awakening when the squad was unable to
beat the lowest of opponents, including the Soviet Wings. The team
struggled the first couple of months, but then the addition of NHL veterans
Dmitri Khristich and Alexander Selivanov seemed to right the ship a bit and
the team started to win again. However, the squad seemed unable to completely
recover from the disastrous start and cruised in the playoffs in the seventh
spot.
Series
Recap: The face
off between the fallen champion and the new contender appeared to be an intriguing
one. Questions arose whether Metallurg would be put all of its talented
components together and make a surprising run, or will the deep, well oiled
Severstal machine run them over. Well, like the hype before a boxing match,
the potential challenger ended up being just another paper tiger.
Severstal crushed Metallurg in three matches with a resounding thud of 3:0,
4:1 and 4:2 victories over their opponent.
Loser’s
aftermath: While
the core of Metallurg should remain the same with the Koreshkov brothers remaining
in the city, a lot of the newly imported players, including former NHLers Selivanov
and Khristich may hastily depart their new home. Selivanov may give NHL
another shot, as he did last summer, when Pittsburgh released him, despite the
speedy forward being one of their better players in camp. The two younger,
established stars on the team, Kaigorodov and Gladskyh will likely take on bigger
roles, especially Kaigorodov, if he is not signed away by Ottawa during the
summer. The team also has loads of up and coming talent in the wings,
ready to step in. The club has a very strong youth hockey program and players
such as 2003 NHL Entry Draft prospect Dmitri Pestunov and 2004 NHL Entry Draft
sniper phenom Yevgeniy Malkov will likely play supporting cast roles on the
squad. Metallurg is also bound to take some loud names out of the
free agent market, but they will likely be more careful then before, balancing
talent with team leadership.
STATISTICS
