Women’s Hockey Update: October 2nd, 2017

Teams representing Moscow Oblast (in white) and Vologda Oblast do battle during last week’s first stage of the Russian Under-18 Women’s National Championship.  (Image Source)

Time to check in with what happened over the last seven days in women’s hockey in Russia!  Lots to cover in this one: six games from the Women’s Hockey League, the opening tilts of the country’s Under-18 women’s championship, and the gathering of not one but two national squads.  Read on!

Faceoff time between Arktik-Universitet (in white) and Tornado. (Image Source)

Tornado Moscow Oblast opened up the Women’s Hockey League action last week on Tuesday, with a visit from Arktik-Universitet Ukhta.  The home side was very much the favourite, and it showed early on in the first game between the two.  The Tornado forward line of Lyudmila Belyakova, Galina Skiba, and Alyona Starovoitova combined for seven points in the first 14 minutes, with defender Mariya Batalova chipping in two more, on the way to a 3-0 lead after the first period.  Anna Shokhina, defending league scoring champion, stretched it to 4-0 early in the second, but from there Arktik-Universitet found their equilibrium, and Nadezhda Alexandrova had to be sharp in the Tornado goal.  She was, too, making 30 saves and allowing only Leisan Iskhakova to get the puck past her at the halfway point of the middle period.  No further scoring ensued, and so Tornado took it by a 4-1 score.

The second meeting between the two teams, on Wednesday, once again saw Tornado build up a 3-0 lead.  Belyakova opened the scoring in the first, before Alevtina Shtaryova doubled the advantage in the second.  The third Tornado goal arrived before that middle frame was over, and it was the first in the Women’s Hockey League career of Russian Under-18 team standout Darya Beloglazova.  With the points pretty much assured, the only question was whether Tornado could get Alexandrova the shutout.  “Not quite,” was the answer; Arktik-Universitet star Fanuza Kadirova broke the goose-egg with all of 12 seconds remaining in the third period.  Still, Tornado’s 3-1 victory gave them a record of 3-1, and nine points on the season.  Arktik-Universitet fell to 0-4, with just one point.

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In Ufa, meanwhile, home team Agidel opened up a two-game set against SK Sverdlovsk Oblast on Wednesday.  This was always likely to be a mis-match in Agidel’s favour, but they did suffer a moment of chagrin early in the first game; the Ufa side took the early lead (Yelizaveta Rodnova’s first goal for Agidel since arriving from SKIF this summer), only to see lowly SKSO promptly tie the game back up through Regina Yumaguzhina.  From there, however, the discrepancy in talent re-asserted itself.  The score after 20 minutes was 4-1 in Agidel’s favour, they ran that to 10-1 after two periods, and the final tally was 13-1 (shots were 62-21).  The big numbers went to team captain Yekaterina Lebedeva (four goals, one assist), Nicol Čupková (two goals, three assists), and the always-dangerous Olga Sosina (five assists).  Seventeen-year-old goalie Darya Martynyukova made her Agidel debut in the game, doing mop-up duty for the third period in relief of Anna Prugova and saving all six shots she faced.

Agidel Ufa’s Fanni Gasparics. (Image Source)

Game two was a similar affair, if not quite so one-sided.  This time, SKSO shocked everyone by taking the lead 28 seconds in, once again thanks to Yumaguzhina.  But the lead lasted just three minutes, and by late in the second period the score stood at 8-1 for Agidel.  The home side eased off a bit at that point, and SKSO took advantage; Yumaguzhina tallied her third goal of the series, before Yekaterina Prozorova made the score 8-3.  However, the last tally went to Agidel and to Sosina; her late shorthanded marker completed her hat-trick on the day and made the final 9-3.  Sosina’s three goals were accompanied by two assists, while Lebedeva had another nice night with a line of 1-3-4.  And once again, Agidel gave a young goalie her debut in relief; 17-year-old Tatyana Fyodorova came in mid-way through the game for her first Women’s Hockey League appearance, and stopped 10 of 12 shots to help her team to a 3-1 record and nine points.  As for SKSO, despite falling to 0-4 they could take some comfort from Yumaguzhina’s goalscoring performance, and also from the three assists posted in the game by Sofiya Senchukova.

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Although the season is yet young, this past week’s visit of Biryusa Krasnoyarsk to Nizhny Novgorod to face SKIF was already one with some playoff importance, as those two teams are likely to be among those fighting  for the last post-season spot or two.  And the first game of the series, on Wednesday, was an absolute cracker.  Yekaterina Likachyova put SKIF ahead early on, only for Biryusa to reply through Yekaterina Dobrodeyeva and Tatyana Shatalova for a 2-1 visitors’ lead after 20 minutes.  The Siberian team stretched their lead to 3-1 in the second period, through Alexandra Budanova, but Likachyova struck again and the second intermission saw a 3-2 lead for Biryusa.  Early in the third, Lidiya Malyavko made it 4-2, and that proved to very important when Polina Bolgareva, with her third goal of the season and third point of the night, once again got SKIF to within one.  But the home team could not complete the comeback; Biryusa goalie Nadezhda Morozova slammed the door from there, and the 4-3 final score meant a very important three points for the visitors.

Valeriya Tarakanova. (Image Source)

It also meant that a win in the second game was somewhat crucial for SKIF, and after struggling a bit in game 1, goalie Valeriya Tarakanova stepped to the fore for the Nizhny Novgorod team.  A fairly sedate first period was livened up only late on, when Oxana Bratishcheva put SKIF in front 1-0, and that triggered a furious Biryusa counterattack in the second frame.  The visitors fired 17 shots at the home team’s goal in the middle 20 minutes, but Tarakanova was having none of it, and that 1-0 lead was still in place at the second intermission.  Tarakanova found herself with work to do in the third, as well; though the Biryusa onslaught lessened somewhat, there were still 11 shots to be dealt with.  Not one of them eluded the 19-year-old netminder, however, and despite being outshot 33-16, SKIF came away with a 1-0 victory, a 3-1 record, and nine points.  Biryusa fell to 2-2, and currently sit fifth in the league with six points.

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And so, with all teams having played four games, the standings look like this:

(Image Source)

Agidel hold down the top spot via goal difference, while the other playoff berths are currently in the hands of SKIF, Tornado, and Dynamo St. Petersburg, the last of whom were idle this week.  As for the scoring race, it is currently dominated by Agidel players, unsurprisingly given their goal-haul versus SKSO.  Sosina leads the league in points with 11 from four games, while Lebedeva’s six goals are tops in that category.  Early days yet, of course!

The Women’s Hockey League now goes on a bit of a hiatus, with games resuming on October 26th.  In the meantime, the Russian national teams take precedence, and that brings us to the next item!

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The Russian senior women’s national team went into camp at Novogorsk yesterday, in preparation for a trip to the U.S. to face clubs from the National Women’s Hockey League.  Team Russia’s 28-player camp roster can be seen here (we will take a closer look at it next Monday, after the final selections for the trip have been made).  The senior nats will play a couple of warm-up games against Japan, next Sunday and Monday, prior to flying overseas on Tuesday the 10th.  The six matches of the NWHL series begin on October 13th, and end on the 22nd.

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Also hard at work in Novogorsk this week is the Russian Under-18 women’s team, which is preparing for a three-nation tournament in Germany.   Russia, Germany, and Switzerland will make up the field for that one, which the games to played from Wednesday to Friday of this week.  The 28-player camp roster can be viewed here.  The tournament is part of the preparations for next January’s defence of the bronze medal that the team won at the 2017 U18 Worlds.

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Staying with the Under-18 hockey set: the first tournament of this year’s Russian U18 national championship was played this past week in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, with seven teams in attendance.  Host club SKIF Nizhny Novgorod’s U18s are also the defending national champions, and were thus the favourites coming in.  Making up the rest of the field were the Sergei Makarov Hockey School from Chelyabinsk and “Selects” teams representing Moscow, Moscow Oblast, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast, and Vologda Oblast.

SKIF and the Moscow Oblast team separated themselves from the pack as the week rolled along, and first place came down to their meeting in the final game of the tournament on Friday — no surprise, given the number of players on both teams with Women’s Hockey League experience (the Moscow Oblast team drew heavily from Tornado’s youth lineup).  In that decisive game, Anna Savonina gave Moscow Oblast the lead midway through the second (a disputed goal, but the referees did award it after much consultation), but SKIF were level within a minute thanks to Ilona Markova.  Not long after that, the winning goal arrived, and while it may have been tipped in, the original shot came off the stick of SKIF’s Oxana Bratishcheva (this just a day after she scored the winner for her club’s senior team in the above-discussed win over Biryusa!).  SKIF shut things down from there, with some good play from goalie Diana Farkhutdinova, and the 2-1 score was the final.  SKIF took top spot, and have the early lead in the quest for the national championship.

Ilona Markova (#18) and her SKIF team-mates celebrate their tying goal in the final game against Moscow Oblast.  (Image Source)

As for the rest of the table for the first tournament: Moscow Oblast obviously ended up second, with the St. Petersburg team in third.  The Sergei Makarov School moved up on the final day to snatch fourth spot from Sverdlovsk Oblast, who finished in fifth.  The Moscow “Selects” team came sixth, with winless Vologda Oblast in seventh.  Kristi Shashkina of SKIF, who scored 9-8-17 over her team’s six games, was the tournament’s top scorer.  A number of players, including Shashkina and all those mentioned by name in the preceding paragraph, departed shortly thereafter for the U18 national team’s camp in Novogorsk.

A grateful shout-out, by the way, to the Russian Hockey Federation and to the staff at the Emerald Ice Arena, which hosted the games.  In past seasons, the U18 women’s national championship has been tricky to follow, with not a lot of coverage.  This tournament, however, saw game sheets posted at the FHR website (we are still missing the last day’s, but no matter), and all the matches were streamed on Youtube.  Hopefully that level of coverage will continue for the rest of this season’s competition!

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I mentioned last week that the roster of teams for the League of Women’s Hockey 2017-18 season — Russia’s top amateur women’s hockey competition — had been issued, and it was my intention to discuss it at length this week.  However, for reasons of post length, I am going to defer that; the games do not start until late October, so we have some time.  I may or may not get to it next Monday, but there will certainly be recaps of the national teams’ games from the coming days, plus some discussion of the senior national squad’s roster for that trip to the United States.  Thank you for reading!