Photo: Moscow “Dynamo”
Yesterday, the Continental Hockey League (KHL) announced that the championship will be suspended after January 14. The good news is that it is just before the Olympic break, which was due to begin on 22 January. The bad news is that the organization is in a state of chaos and there is no less clarity about what will happen next after the tournament is stopped.
Until the end of last year, the situation did not seem to be so dramatic. Ten days ago, everything seemed to be under control. There were a total of 15 patients in the four clubs, but on January 3, there was no match between the local Jokerit and the Avtomobilist in Ekaterinburg in Helsinki, as the test results of the guest hockey players turned out to be “doubtful”. It was Avtomobilst that became the first major focal point for Covid-19, but it looked more like an accident. But last week, one finger was no longer enough to count the clubs affected by the virus.
Although Avtomobilist has already completed its self-isolation, the list is also impressive – Salfa Yulaev in Ufa, CSKA and Spartak in Moscow, Metallity in Vytaz in Moscow Region, Metallurg in Magnitogorsk, Torpedo in Nizhny Novgorod and Dynamo in Riga there are clubs with more than ten hockey players.
If, in a similar situation, the NHL decided to suspend the championship immediately, KHL hesitated. Although Alexei Morozov, president of KHL, always emphasizes that the health and safety of players is paramount, in reality, hockey players (and other athletes) are treated as raw materials or as soldiers who simply do what their top officials or clubs tell them. managers.
It should be mentioned here that last year, when Riga “Dinamo” could not play, the team was awarded technical losses. This season, Ufa’s “Salavat Yulaev” suffered, who could not play against Chelyabinsk’s “Traktor” on November 6, because the club had a large number of infected people. It seemed that this would also solve the situation – if you can’t play, you get technical losses and peace. But two months later, the league found itself in a situation where it would have to be decided which of the two teams with the Covid-19 outbreak would suffer? The one above the tournament table? Or the one who is less infected?
The league has started to postpone the games, but it is clear that this cannot be done indefinitely, because, unlike the National Hockey League (NHL), the KHL calendar is subordinated to the needs of the national team, if specifically for the World Cup. Respectively, the matches of the main tournament cannot be so played, for example, in April, because the final series of the Gagarin Cup usually takes place in the fourth month of the year. Due to the peculiarities of the KHL website, some of the transferred games appeared on the calendar in June.
On January 11, KHL convened a board of club leaders. Many were ready to continue, attracting hockey players from both the farm club and the youth team. KHL’s position was also that the championship should continue. The league has developed several options – to reduce the number of matches in the main tournament or to play a “play-in” tournament. In the end, however, a decision was made to abandon these options and hold a full-fledged main event, ”the league said in a statement.
Most of the clubs breathed a sigh of relief, because the hockey players themselves did not want to end up in a situation where they had to sit at home in the middle of January instead of playing. According to official information, 126 cases of the disease have been detected in the league, 97 of them in hockey players, but the course of the disease is mostly asymptomatic. Everyone was preparing for the championship to continue, and the transferred matches could be played during the Olympic break.
The decision to stop the tournament the next day turned out to be even more surprising. Officials, club representatives and journalists have strongly criticized the league for this break for two reasons. Firstly, it is not clear in what format the transferred matches will take place and what will happen if there is a high incidence during the Olympic break. Secondly, teams with a large number of national teams are put at a disadvantage because their opponents will gain an unsportsmanlike advantage.
“A lot of people came up with smart ideas, the league created the illusion of an exchange of views, but today we learn about the suspension of the tournament,” said Alexei Volkov, general manager of Omsk’s Avangard. “We were not even informed about any developments. In our opinion, the teams where most of them are healthy should have been allowed to play. In addition, many clubs are returning from quarantine. We could play peacefully until the Olympic break, but the league decided everything itself, we just put us in front of the fact. Yesterday we were promised to send different variants, but it turns out that it was not there either, ”the representative of the club revealed.
As a result, the league has reached a point where more than 60 games have been postponed, but the future is uncertain. There were variants that the “play-off” tournament would be shortened, for example, the first round would be played until three wins, while there would be no one-day break between two home matches. The communication is not convincing and you can expect some surprises from the league every day.
It seemed before that suspending the season was not really KHL’s decision. Those who follow the events of neighboring hockey in depth are well aware that the sport is closely linked to politics and to billionaires close to the country’s top officials. It is possible that the KHL season would continue if the “most important tournament of the four years” – the Olympic Games – were not ahead.
It must be understood that in Russia, several groups are fighting for influence in hockey. This was also reflected in the decision-making process, as was the case, for example, with Oleg Znarok, who was originally appointed national team coach, but then Vladislav Tretyak of the Russian Hockey Federation had to justify his out-of-date replica of Znarok. The existence of several groups is detrimental to hockey, because instead of fighting together to achieve goals, each of them acts in their own interests.
This time, the “victory” in the fight was celebrated by the people directly related to the national team. “The reason for the suspension is not to worry about the health of the players, no one thinks about it. [Izlases ģenerālmenedžeris] Ilya Kovalchuk, [padomnieks] Igor Jesmantovich and [galvenais treneris] Alexei Zhamnov wants to win and therefore destroys the championship, “Alexei Shevchenko, a spokesman for Sport-Express, was usually tough. Other journalists also implicitly pointed out that this trio was the main initiator of the suspension. And if they weren’t listened to at first, the next day was probably followed by a phone call that forced Morozov to change his position.
KHL promises that an action plan and a new calendar will be ready by the end of the month. It is already clear that for some the option offered by the league will suit more, for others – less, and there will always be dissatisfied. But the chaos around is once again showing that everyone is spitting on both fans and hockey players. Because this league is not a club, but a competition of influential people.
