The results of the regular championship and forecasts for Play-OFF
The regular championship of the Continental Hockey League (KHL) gave several not that sensational, but at least curious results, and the Yaroslavl “Lokomotiv” and the Chelyabinsk “Tractor” who became winners of the championship in their conferences turned into formal favorites. However, practice shows that in the KHL this status means little.
Sunday, March 23, ended Regular KHL Championship. And to the one who wants to present it as extremely routine, it will not be difficult to do it. It is enough to compare the eights of Play-OFF participants, formed in two conferences following the results of the past and current championships. In the West, nothing new is generally – all the same teams. In the eastern, two changes: Siberia and Admiral entered the Gagarin Cup drawing instead of “Lada” and “Amur”. But the cosmetic nature of these adjustments is emphasized by such a nuance: that the Togliatti and Khabarovsk residents a year ago, that the Novosibirsk residents with Vladivostok now finished on the lower, seventh and eighth, lines in the table. That is, this is such a replacement of some outsiders by others, which has no fundamental importance. And so the picture is familiar, stable.
But, peering into it, of course, something curious is discovered. It is not even so little.
In the West, for example, more than ever shocked SKA.
The club, which, from the point of view of the resources that the KHL is considered to be almost the main giant, then gained unprecedented power, then lost it and in the end, with some fantastically meager amount of glasses-82 (in 2024 it was more than 13 more, despite the even then the Petersburg season)-he finished only in seventh place. Above, not only those who correspond to SKA according to the status, by background-Lokomotiv, the Moscow Dynamo, CSKA, which has recently added Spartak, but, for example, Severstal with Dynamo Minsk, although before it itself, the exit in Play-Off was already happiness.
But in the east of all metamorphosis no less. Suppose, it seems that the Ufa “Salavat Yulaev” with his two amazingly productive Canadian forwards – Sheldon Rembol and Josh Livo became more expensive. Livo was so hot in the regular season that he abandoned 49 goals, breaking the KHL sniper record of Sergei Mozyakin, who had been holding since 2017.
And the most interesting metamorphosis is, of course, with the « tractor ».
In the previous season, he reached the Play-OFF semifinals, although in a regular championship for a club with grandiose ambitions and opportunities he did not pull-an unremarkable middle peasant. At the same time, the Chelyabinsk management advice not to search for good from good neglected and instead of Alexei Zavarukhin, he appointed to train the “Tractor” of Canadian Benois, a specialist with a non -casual biography – a move that looked quite strange.
But while he justifies himself. This regular championship “Tractor” held extremely cheerfully: added in discipline, tenacious and jumped in the conference and “Salavat” and the current winner of the Gagarin Cup “Metallurg”. And above the « tractor » in the league consolidated table was only one club – the standard of the style on which the Urals put. In 2024, the exceptional density, the ability to knit rivals on the hands and feet allowed the “Lokomotiv” to the Play-OFF final, in which, however, Magnitogorsk freshness and lightness convincingly prevailed, in 2025-to get the continent cup for victory in the regular championship, turning along with the “Tractor” into a formal favorite Play-OFF.
True, it is precisely that formal.
The fact that in the KHL achievement in the framework of the regular championship the factor is so -so is well known. Suffice it to say that the holder of the continent Cup only once in the history of the league reached the Gagarin Cup: the double was a success in 2019 CSKA.
And the breakdowns of those who got it were above the roof. In 2024, Dynamo was already in the second circle, poking on the Tractor. And the current season, moreover, gave a bunch of more relevant grounds to consider the alignment exclusively confusing. The modest sixth position of the Vanguard is explained exclusively by autumn failure, and after the appearance of the Canadian GI BUSHE, the Omsk team came up at the coaching post. The Moscow « Dynamo » as a whole looked in the regular season no worse than Lokomotiv. And SKA, for all his problems, the selection of players is deeper than the same “Salavat Yulaev”, which is too dependent on the mood of Canadian scorers. And hardly the fans of Dynamo are delighted with the fact that, having lost on the final day of the “Severstal” regularly-2: 3, already in the starting round of Play-OFF, it ran into the Petersburgers.
