HC Sochi were the fierce underdogs heading into the playoffs, a new team filled with hopes, ex-NHL players and high expectations. Sadly, they were met in the first round by the KHL’s best, the seemingly invincible CSKA Moscow, and easily swept aside in four games. The question is, how high was this mountain and was there any other possible outcome other than a sweep?
Let’s wind back and look at the teams’ regular seasons. The Red Army finished on top of the league with a record of 49-9-2, while Sochi just squeezed in to the playoffs with a record of 28-23-9. They had massively different seasons by a wide margin – they were simply on opposite ends of the spectrum – but it’s hockey, anything could happen. Underdogs could wrestle out the Continental Cup winner, a curse that has followed nearly all past winners of the trophy. But alas, the teams were polar opposites. When we take an nice easy metric, shots allowed versus shots against, a stark difference stands out:
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CSKA led the league in shots on goal, though not quite in shooting percentage, and managed stay in the top three for all shooting statistics. CSKA was also the best team at shots against by a wide margin, with 231 less shots against than Torpedo for playoff teams. Not even the defensive systems of Ak Bars Kazan kept up with CSKA’s shot suppression. It was not necessarily their defensive play mind you, but simply the fact that the team relies on keeping the puck in the opponent’s zone, swift zone exits on the counter-attack and constantly maintaining possession as a key part of the offense. This is spear-headed by the league’s first and fourth-place scorers, Alexander Radulov and Stephane Da Costa, respectively.
On the other side, the wildcard Sochi squad had slipped in on the back of Ryan Whitney, who managed to post a record +7 in a blowout win over Sibir. Sochi’s leading scorer, Nikita Shchitov, finished the season 40 points behind Radulov. These teams were polar opposites; Sochi would have to heavily close the gap to even come close to not being swept. For a team so dominant offensively and a team so weak on the defence, a sweep seemed almost completely inevitable.
Yet there was one flaw that surrounded Radulov and CSKA that might have given Sochi a chance. That would be the fact that Radulov takes a heck of a lot of penalties. Radulov and Evgeny Artyukhin sit first and second in penalty minutes and the team was fourth overall in the league. We can break down this ray of hope with penalty minutes per game and the special team rates;
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As you can see, there is big “0” for powerplay percentage on the Sochi side in the playoffs. CSKA sits 5th in penalty kill efficiency; the Red Army’s biggest weak point was laid bare. Sochi hadn’t come into the playoffs with a bad powerplay, sitting just outside of the top ten in the league. If this series was not going to be a sweep, those 11 minutes needed to be capitalised on. It was the one thing that could have swung the momentum, especially in the crucial game three when Sochi held the lead. Their special teams were the key to changing the momentum, but fell flat.
There is one last point. The last line of defence: The goaltenders. As Henrik Karlsson showed with Jokerit, a goaltender’s play can carry the momentum of a winning team, or simply break up the momentum of an attacking team. An elite goaltender can steal games and help force that extra game. If there was a way Sochi could have held the game three lead and pushed forward, it could have rested on the shoulders of either Tomas Popperle or Andrei Gavrilov, both of whom have had posted underwhelming stats at best. Popperle, the starter for 45 games, finished with a .912 save percentage, which isn’t that far from Sergei Galimov’s .919%.
The goaltender battle could have been a deciding factor. However, CSKA’s Kevin Lalande leads the playoffs with a strong .954 save percentage, while Gavrilov fell to .891. Sochi needed a hero in net, someone to turn the tide of a game with a strong presence. Sadly they were met with CSKA and their elite goaltending. The door was slammed shut on Sochi.
While it might be a sad end to a new team with bright talent, with an opponent like CSKA who are so dominant offensively and defensively with elite goaltending behind them, it would have taken a miracle for Sochi to not be swept out at the start. With a failure to capitalize on CSKA’s weakness on the special teams and no miraculous goaltending, it is very hard to see how this could have been anything other than a sweep.
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