The final series of the Gagarin Cup unexpectedly quickly turned into an endgame. Moreover, CSKA Moscow avoided the exchange of their fighting pieces. The leaders of the «army» Mikhail Grigorenko, Konstantin Okulov, Anton Slepyshev and Nikita Nesterov broke into the defensive redoubts of Kazan «Ak Bars» over and over again and scored 14 points for four in the first four matches of the confrontation. The Red-Blues coach Sergei Fedorov also managed to use the young Prokhor Poltapov, who, having forcedly replaced the injured Maxim Mamin, successfully joined the nominally second link and found many gaps in the defense of Kazan.
For the first time under the leadership of Fedorov, having lost the opening match of the series, CSKA scored three victories in a row and quickly approached the championship. Not many people expected such an alignment, because the current “Ak Bars” is perhaps the most inconvenient opponent for the “red-blue”. But the vis-a-vis of the head coach of the “army” Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, apparently, did not have enough resources to contain the army machine. Unusual for an eminent and experienced specialist, laughter at a press conference after the fourth match of the series (2:3) seemed familiar to many — Ak Bars, if not completely lost control of the situation, then close to it. How erroneous this opinion was.
It would be fair to say that Kazan did not lose heart and honestly expected to extend the series.
“I know from my own experience that it is psychologically difficult when you lead in a series with a score of 3-1. The last step is the hardest. CSKA won three games in a row, and we can achieve this,” said Ak Bars forward Artem Lukoyanov.
This they fully confirmed from the very first minutes of the fifth match, which took place in Kazan. Absolutely the entire territory of the Ak Bars home arena was electrified so powerfully that it was absolutely impossible to resist or sit still. The tension sparked everywhere — both on the site and in the stands.
«A fan will forgive everything except indifference,» read the text on one of the viewer's posters. And there was no indifference from the word at all. From the moment of the starting face-off, the teams began to fight for the puck, as for the Cup. In the first period alone, Ak Bars and CSKA made 25 power moves for two, most of which took place in the first five minutes. Yaroslav Dyblenko, for example, after one of the hits, his helmet flew off at all, and while the defender of the “army men” was on the bench, waiting for a pause, the helmet made its way from one gate to another. And Alexander Radulov, when trying to hit, almost flew somewhere into space.
At the same time, it did not reach the truly scoring chances. Until Connor McDavid woke up in Prokhor Poltapov. The young forward of CSKA, who returned to the fourth line due to the return of Maxim Mamin to the squad, performed a masterpiece solo passage just before the teams left for the locker rooms, beating the entire Ak Bars on his way.
It seemed that a control shot in the head of the “leopards” was made, and CSKA would not miss its goal. But in the second period, Kazan began to play with a spirit that was incomparable with the previous four games. And it is not surprising that Alexander Radulov, the leader of today's Ak Bars, again came to the fore. In the middle of the period, the hosts received another right to play in the majority, which in the final series of the Gagarin Cup, the team of Zinetula Bilyaletdinov began to noticeably act up. But this time, Vadim Shipachev found Radulov in the slot as a grandmaster, and the Ak Bars captain opened Adam Reideborn's net.
And Radulov's efforts could have been in vain, if CSKA realized the majority in the third period — Ak Bars defender Dmiriy Yudin set his team up a lot, only for his well-known reason, hitting the head of the guest player on the bench, and received 4 minutes of penalty. Luckily for the Kazan team, the “soldiers” did not take advantage of the great opportunity to come forward.
But Stanislav Galiev used his chance. In the last three matches, in which Ak Bars lost, the Kazan striker played without goals, which is why he became the object of criticism. Many journalists and fans frankly said that Stanislav was lost on the court among such a powerful CSKA. But today he was found, and the puck after his wrist throw is a gap in the gates of Reideborn.
It is symbolic that it was Galiyev's goal that became victorious for Ak Bars in the first match of the series. So he became in the game, which could be the last for the Kazan club of the season. But the series continues and moves back to Moscow. With its spectators, CSKA never won the Gagarin Cup. “CSKA” had a chance to correct this disease, “Ak Bars” — to make a powerful comeback.