Avtomobilist vs Traktor. What will the Chelyabinsk club show after changing its head coach?
On Friday, October 13, Ekaterinburg Avtomobilist will welcome guests from Chelyabinsk, the Traktor hockey club, at its home Uralets Arena.
At the start of the season, the Ural club is experiencing serious personnel problems, which, however, does not prevent Avtomobilist from demonstrating fairly high-quality hockey. Leading defenseman Nick Ebert was injured during preseason training camp and did not appear on the ice in official matches. By mid-September, two more key defensive players, Denis Barantsev and Jesse Blaker, remained out of the game, so now Avtomobilist’s defensive line looks to some extent experimental. Following the defenders, the epidemic of injuries also overtook the forwards. And if young Denezhkin and Kizimov are still more likely to be rotation players, then Curtis Volk is a key hockey player in Avtomobilist’s attacking schemes.
However, the Urals are still coping well without injured hockey players, and are deservedly among the top three in the East. At the moment, Avtomobilist has 22 points in 17 matches played, which corresponds to third position in the Eastern Conference standings. In the last five matches, the Urals have only one defeat; the trip to Ufa was unsuccessful, where Nikolai Zavarukhin’s team lost to the local Salavat Yulaev with a score of 1-4.
Traktor
An entire era has ended for the Chelyabinsk club. Anvar Gatiyatulin, a cult coach for Traktor, was dismissed after a frankly unclear start to the championship. Having at hand a fairly powerful roster by KHL standards, Gatiyatulin was never able to stabilize the game of his players, losing more often in the championship than winning. The last straw was a dry home defeat 0-4 from Salavat Yulaev, immediately after which Gatiyatulin was dismissed at the post-match press conference.
Now Gatiyatulin’s assistant, Alexey Zavarukhin, has been appointed acting assistant, but it is already clear that this is a temporary figure. Rumors are sent to Traktor by Ilya Vorobyov or Oleg Znarok, but this is still just speculation by journalists. The first match under the leadership of the new coach can hardly be called successful; Traktor lost away to Barys 1-2, but then managed to win a strong-willed victory in Novosibirsk over Siberia 5-4. Thus, Traktor managed to climb to fifth place, with 20 points scored.
Our Expert Predictions & Analysis on Avtomobilist vs Traktor
AvtomobilistAt the start of the season, the Ural club is experiencing serious personnel problems, which, however, does not prevent Avtomobilist from demonstrating fairly high-quality hockey. Leading defenseman Nick Ebert was injured during preseason training camp and did not appear on the ice in official matches. By mid-September, two more key defensive players, Denis Barantsev and Jesse Blaker, remained out of the game, so now Avtomobilist’s defensive line looks to some extent experimental. Following the defenders, the epidemic of injuries also overtook the forwards. And if young Denezhkin and Kizimov are still more likely to be rotation players, then Curtis Volk is a key hockey player in Avtomobilist’s attacking schemes.
However, the Urals are still coping well without injured hockey players, and are deservedly among the top three in the East. At the moment, Avtomobilist has 22 points in 17 matches played, which corresponds to third position in the Eastern Conference standings. In the last five matches, the Urals have only one defeat; the trip to Ufa was unsuccessful, where Nikolai Zavarukhin’s team lost to the local Salavat Yulaev with a score of 1-4.
Traktor
An entire era has ended for the Chelyabinsk club. Anvar Gatiyatulin, a cult coach for Traktor, was dismissed after a frankly unclear start to the championship. Having at hand a fairly powerful roster by KHL standards, Gatiyatulin was never able to stabilize the game of his players, losing more often in the championship than winning. The last straw was a dry home defeat 0-4 from Salavat Yulaev, immediately after which Gatiyatulin was dismissed at the post-match press conference.
Now Gatiyatulin’s assistant, Alexey Zavarukhin, has been appointed acting assistant, but it is already clear that this is a temporary figure. Rumors are sent to Traktor by Ilya Vorobyov or Oleg Znarok, but this is still just speculation by journalists. The first match under the leadership of the new coach can hardly be called successful; Traktor lost away to Barys 1-2, but then managed to win a strong-willed victory in Novosibirsk over Siberia 5-4. Thus, Traktor managed to climb to fifth place, with 20 points scored.
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