Cool hockey goalies from Russia in 2023 will not surprise anyone, and it’s not so easy to say who is the best now. Andrey Vasilevsky won two Stanley Cups in three years, Igor Shesterkin received the NHL's best goaltender award only last summer, and Ilya Sorokin claims this award this season. Sergey Bobrovsky recently broke into the top 25 most winning goaltenders in the history of the North American League. But there is also Alexander Georgiev, who became the first number of the owner of the Stanley Cup “Colorado”, Semyon Varlamov, Ilya Samsonov and promising Petr Kochetkov, Yaroslav Askarov and Ivan Prosvetov!
But they are all in America, and in the KHL, bright goalkeepers with a Russian passport have become a rarity in recent years. Alexander Eremenko ended his career a year ago, and this spring Olympic champion Vasily Koshechkin followed suit. Someone could shine in a short period, and then disappear, someone was not given a step forward due to injuries, and someone, like Ivan Fedotov, was forced to take a break in his career.
Season 2022/23, in addition to the dizzying game of the Nizhny Novgorod «Torpedo» Igor Larionov, the emotions of Alexander Radulov and the first title of Roman Rotenberg as head coach (Continental Cup), gave us another vivid impression. This is 27-year-old goalkeeper Nikita Serebryakov, who helped the “Admiral” from Vladivostok reach the playoffs and almost create a sensation there. To the incredible numbers that the player showed in the season — 94.4% of shots made in the regular season and 94.5% in the playoffs — you need to add one more.
His team flew almost 150 thousand kilometers during the season, and, despite such a colossal load, the goalkeeper found the strength to work miracles from match to match.
«Serebryakov is simply handsome. I just caught some… There were 10 unrealistic saves,» Avangard forward Sergei Tolchinsky said at the beginning of the championship.
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“Yes, he just did his job. I saw him play even better,” his teammate Evgeny Grachev was surprised at questions about Nikita after 48 saves by the goalkeeper in Kazan in the playoffs.
But at one time, a graduate of the Moscow Dynamo school did not just show great promise, but was a member of the Russian junior team. In January 2012, Serebryakov got into the symbolic team of the traditional tournament in Canada, which brought together the best hockey players under 17 years old. The Russian national team won gold, and Ivan Barbashev, Valery Nichushkin, Nikita Zadorov, Pavel Buchnevich and Vladislav Gavrikov played on the same team with Nikita. Not the last people in Russian hockey. In 2013, he was at the Junior World Championship for 18-year-olds, where he shared playing time with Igor Shesterkin. But if Shesterkin's career developed progressively, then Serebryakov was stormy.
Perhaps he left too early for Canada, where he hoped to light up before the draft. Perhaps the clubs were embarrassed by his small size by modern standards. Maybe he just did not immediately find his coach. Such a person was Leonid Tambiev, with the appearance of which in the «Admiral» Serebryakov truly blossomed. To his excellent reaction, positioning and speed were added stability and discipline. All this helped the goalkeeper gain confidence.
Often goaltenders who shine in the regular season fade away in the playoffs. Serebryakov was not afraid of either “Salavat Yulaev” or “Ak Bars”. It was he who became the main star of the series with the second team of the East, reflecting 55 shots in one of the matches. And it was because of him that Kazan had to fly to Vladivostok for the sixth game of the series, and with a little luck, Admiral could drag out the confrontation for all seven meetings. attention to Serebryakov,» Tambiev noted, summing up the results of last season. This spring, Nikita would definitely be among the candidates for a trip to the World Cup, but, alas, the goalkeeper's debut in official matches for the main team will have to wait.
What is interesting, despite the shortage of Russian goalkeepers in the KHL and the opportunity to leave for the NHL, Serebryakov extended the contract with the “Admiral”, thereby thanking the Far East for their trust. However, it is not worth excluding various options now. The richer KHL clubs will certainly do everything to ensure that Serebryakov ends up in their roster in the summer, and the amount of compensation is unlikely to scare them off.