With the resignation of Ryabykin, the Hartley era ended in Omsk. Was the Canadian’s assistant doomed from the start?

Dmitry YerykalovThe first dismissal of a coach in the KHL season. The first resignation in the KHL did take place. Managers held out for a whole month, but with the onset of October they still broke. Patience ran out at the managerial tandem “Avant-garde” Krylov – Volkov. In theory, they could have fired Dmitry Ryabykin before, but they waited for the first victory after six defeats at the start. After the first victory came the second and third. It seemed that the “hawks” were on the path of correction and were about to take the place in the table that they were predicted before the start of the season. Eastern Conference. Although this is a playoff zone, the position fully reflects the crisis in the ranks of the hawks. The trigger for the resignation of the head coach could be a home defeat against Kunlun. With 11 thousand of their fans, the Ryabykin team lost dry to outsiders of Chinese origin. And if you remember that a few days before these 0:4 there were 0:5 in Ufa … However, a number of insiders report that the main reason for Ryabykin’s dismissal was not even defeat. No matter how sensitive they are. It is reported that the coach has lost contact with the players. Several sources at once speak of a completely depressing atmosphere in the locker room. This also applies to the match with Kunlun, after which one of the players freaked out, not embarrassed by the journalists, and the daily life of the team. From someone Ryabykin could not ask in all severity, but on the other wards, on the contrary, he broke loose. “The results of the team, and most importantly, the game, leave much to be desired, this is obvious. And most importantly, there is no progress, we gave time to correct the situation, and if the team added little by little, it would be visible. However, in recent matches we alternate victories with defeats, and defeats are sensitive – 0:5, 0:4. Of course, we are not satisfied with this. The situation became critical, the atmosphere in the team was depressing, so there was no point in waiting any longer. Dmitry Ryabykin has given Avangard a lot over the years, we thank him for his work, ”Omsk general manager Alexei Volkov explained Ryabykin’s resignation to the Championship. Looking back, you understand that Ryabykin was originally sentenced. It was hard for him, as Hartley’s successor, to surpass the teacher. Those who caught the Canadian, and even more so won the championship with him, could hardly take anyone else seriously. Not even Hartley’s assistant. Or “all the more so” Hartley’s assistant? The transition from assistant to chief is often given to coaches with great difficulty. Especially within the same team. A rare positive example is Ilya Vorobyov, who first helped another great Canadian, Mike Keenan, and then won the Gagarin Cup on the first try as his successor. But this is rather an exception. One got the impression that the Avangard bosses themselves were not sure about the figure of Ryabykin. Hence the minimum term of the contract, and the talk that the candidacy of this specialist was chosen rather out of desperation. Moreover, the leaders of the club spoke about this both at the time of Ryabykin’s appointment, and at the time of the crisis at the start of the season. Alexander Krylov spoke with either pride or regret about contacts with Joel Quenneville and Mike Babcock. One can only guess what it was like to listen to Ryabykin himself, who was almost told in the forehead that he was Plan B. He definitely lacked public support. Those who talk about holes in the Avangard are right. Being fully equipped with bright forwards, Omsk residents are experiencing an acute shortage of classy central forwards, they have not found a replacement for Oscar Kaski on the blue line, and only the lazy did not talk about the goalkeeper problem of the “hawks”. It turns out that the managers shifted the responsibility for their mistakes to the head coach? This, of course, is not entirely true. Firstly, before Ryabykin was fired, he was taken to the headquarters of a strong assistant in the person of Mikhail Kravets, who has now received the prefix and. about. And secondly, Ryabykin himself repeatedly spoke about betting on attack, and the selection completely rhymed with his vision of hockey. However, he was able to maintain this line only in the summer. With the onset of September, the “lace” disappeared somewhere. By sacking Ryabykin, the Omsk leaders consider it a utopia to attempt to preserve Hartley’s legacy without Hartley himself. Ryabykin – it was a comma. Now in any hands there will be a point. And also, whoever now heads the Avangard, it will be the same compromise as the spring appointment of Ryabykin. There are practically no top coaches sitting without work and waiting for offers on the market. It is worth forgetting about Vyacheslav Bykov for a long time, he does not perceive himself as a practicing coach. There is Dmitry Kvartalnov, who is being matched in Omsk, but the most winning KHL coach is embarrassed not only by the fact that he has exactly zero victories in the Gagarin Cup, but also by his style, which absolutely does not suit the current Avangard. Be that as it may, Omsk hockey is waiting for another page, the history of which will be written from scratch. The era of Hartley has finally gone into oblivion.