KRS Vanke Rays!

(Image Source)

The season is done, and the Women’s Hockey League has a new champion! KRS Vanke Rays Shenzhen, who joined the league just last summer after a couple of campaigns in the CWHL, finished off a three-game Final sweep of defending champions Agidel Ufa earlier today with a 4-2 victory in the decider. Read on, for a look back at, and some thoughts on, the Final series!

The series began last Saturday, and the opener turned on a massive second period from the Chinese club. Jessica Wong’s goal had already given them the lead after a fairly even opening stanza, but they outshot Agidel 21-4 in the middle period, and Rachel Llanes and Megan Bozek found the net to increase the advantage to three. Late in that second period, young Veronika Korzhakova reduced the arrears for Agidel, but that was all the scoring, and the game finished 3-1 in KRS Vanke Rays’ favour. There was further bad news for Agidel; starting goalie Anna Prugova was replaced by Mariya Sorokina after the third Vanke Rays goal, but Sorokina last only ten minutes before being felled by what appeared to be a serious leg injury. It would end Sorokina’s Final, and 18-year-old Polina Suyushkina appeared as Prugova’s backup thereafter.

The second match would be the most entertaining game of the Final, and it included a virtuosa performance from Finnish legend Noora Räty in the Vanke Rays’ net. The game went scoreless into the second period, before Llanes scored her second goal of the Final to put the Vanke Rays ahead. Amy Menke made it 2-0 shortly thereafter, and when, with ten minutes to go in the third, Leah Lum added another to the tally, it looked like Game 2 was in the bag. But there was drama still to come. The formidable Olga Sosina broke through against Räty with five minutes to go, then Agidel captain Yekaterina Lebedeva did likewise with 90 seconds on the clock. It was a white-knuckle finish, but KRS Vanke Rays held on for the 3-2 win, and Räty was a huge factor in the result. She stopped 47 of 49 shots in Game 2, including 20 of 22 in a third period that Agidel completely dominated. We knew that Räty would have her moment in this series, and here it was.

Highlights of Game 3 of the Final.

Agidel now found themselves with their backs to the wall, down 0-2 in a best-of-five as the series moved across town for Game 3 (KRS Vanke Rays, due to the coronavirus situation, were using the small rink at the Ufa Arena complex as their home ice for the series). Like Game 2, Game 3 got to the second period without goals, but as in both the previous matches, it was KRS Vanke Rays who got on the board first. Hannah Miller opened the scoring in the middle frame, before Lum struck again to make it 2-0. Early in the third, veteran Agidel defender Anna Shibanova halved the deficit to give her team some hope, but that was soon dashed; 2019-20 ZhHL scoring champion Alexandra Carpenter made it 3-1 halfway through the final period on a tremendous coast-to-coast solo rush, and when Bozek extended the lead to 4-1 with five minutes left, KRS Vanke Rays had both hands on the trophy. There was one small consolation to come for Agidel, in the form of a late goal from Czech forward Alena Mills, but that was all. 4-2 it ended, and KRS Vanke Rays Shenzhen are the new champions of the Women’s Hockey League.

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We would be remiss not to take our hats off to Agidel, who enjoyed a fantastic season right up until the Final. The two-time Cup champions won the regular season for a third straight year, and their excellent balance of high-level experience and precocious youth will give them ample. optimism for next season. That they deserved better in the end than a sweep in the Final is particularly suggested by their splendid Game 2 performance. But Räty was a brick wall on the day, and sometimes that’s how it goes; Agidel will also rue three straight matches in which their second-period play let them down. But this is still a great team, and all respect to the the Agidel players, and to bench boss Denis Afinogenov and the rest of the coaching staff.

Noora Räty. (Image Source)

But the main congratulations must go to Kunlun Red Star Vanke Rays Shenzhen, and to coach Brian Idalski and his staff. As mentioned in our Final preview, the Vanke Rays roster was broadly composed of three groups: homegrown Chinese players (including some key contributors on defence), North Americans of Chinese extraction on the “naturalization” track for the national team, and some international superstars like Carpenter, Bozek, and of course Räty. The three groups were complementing each other perfectly by the end of the season, as their three-game victory in the Final amply showed. “We came together and made common cause,” said team captain Carpenter after the championship was secured. Congratulations to them indeed!

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So, whither the ZhHL in 2020-21? Well, obviously, this is something that we will talk about more over the summer, but the next championship could be a very close-run thing indeed. There is no reason to think that either KRS Vanke Rays or Agidel will take a step back, and former powerhouse Tornado Moscow Oblast may well benefit from a full season with Lyudmila Belyakova back in the lineup (especially if Yelena Dergachyova returns from her materinity leave as well). The two St. Petersburg clubs may insert themselves into the mix too; 2018-19 finalists Dynamo suffered injury woes this season and should be better next time around, while Gorny showed massive improvement in this campaign and were not too far from the playoffs. Biryusa Krasnoyarsk, who made the 2019-20 playoffs, and SKIF Nizhny Novgorod, who did not, boast solid teams that while not among the leaders can still beat anybody on their day. And we even saw further slow but definite improvement at lowly SK Sverdlovsk Oblast, who, incidentally, have a very decent U18 program that may well bear some fruit for them anon. Lots to look forward too, in other words!

In the meantime, the emergence of a new power in KRS Vanke Rays, and one with tremendous fan support at that, can only be a real benefit for the league as a whole. Agidel goalie Anna Prugova said as much after the Final was done, and summed up the situation well: “For all the teams in the ZhHL, KRS Vanke Rays are an incentive for growth.” There may be more growth to come, too, not just for individual teams but for the league itself; no official information on possible expansion this summer just yet, but there have been rumours of a new team or two.

Congratulations to new champions KRS Vanke Rays Shenzhen, and thank you for reading!