There has been sensational news in the KHL. Just three days after the end of the 2010 play-offs, the league has declared that this season’s runners-up, MVD, will no longer exist.
Starting from the next season, MVD will be united with fellow Interior Ministry outfit Dynamo Moscow.
The new hockey team will be named United Hockey Club Dynamo, or UHC Dynamo.
Its home games will be split between two palaces in Moscow and the Moscow region, with at least 26 games held at the country’s main ice hockey arena, Khodynka. Meanwhile, the UHC Dynamo leadership claims that it plans to build a new club arena in Petrovsky Park, where Dynamo Moscow Football Club had played for more than 70 years, until the stadium was closed for reconstruction.
Fourth in the KHL regular season MVD exceeded all odds during this year’s play-offs going all the way to the final, where they lost to Ak Bars in seven games. While Dynamo, having a substantially bigger budget, was knocked out of the playoffs by city rivals Spartak in the first round.
MVD president Mikhail Tyurkin, who will now be the head of the new club, says it is a move on for the Moscow region side.
There are no reports on the new team’s head coach.
The Gagarin Cup finalists, AK Bars and MVD Balashikha, will need game seven to decide who will take all the glory in Europe’s top hockey league’s 2009-10 season.
AK Bars Kazan leveled the score in the series at 3-3, destroying their rivals on home ice with a 7-1 scoreline.
All the previous games of the final have been super-tight, but Balashikha players, who knew a win would make them champions, never stood a chance against the Snow Leopards on Sunday.
Zinetula Bilyaletdinov’s men opened the scoring through Niko Kapanen in the seventh minute of the game. Then Grigory Panin doubled AK Bars lead with a little more than a minute left to play in the opening period, 2-0.
And after conceding three more in the second 20 minutes, MVD realized they should start preparing for the deciding game, which will take place in Balashikha on Tuesday, April 27.
Defending KHL champions AK Bars continued to tear the visitors apart – they collected too many penalty minutes in the third period to see the game finish at 7-1.
The MVD consolation goal came from Aleksander Shibaev with two minutes to play.
“Good game. Good result. The series continue,” Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, AK Bars boss, commented after the game.
And, despite a severe blow, MVD are also far from panicking.
”Nothing terrible happened, believe me. Ak Bars scored four of their goals in powerplay. The atmosphere in our locker room is wonderful. There’s no depression,” MVD coach Oleg Znarok told Sport-Express newspaper.
By Russia Today