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U18 Russian team

Yakushev72

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Dec 27, 2010
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I'm going to assume this was Golubovitch's last game at that level. That's the only thing that makes sense.
 
Caser

Caser

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Bronze medal, first medal since Kucherov&Co, iirc. As usual some thoughts.

About Golubovich, I give credit to him for finally switching from the 'top6/bottom6' to the 'middle six' concept. About his roster selections, I personally would replace Maksimov with Kravtsov and Kalabushkin with Rodionychev and basically that's it, so maybe I don't blame him here as much as others do. There are things I do blame him for though: for 'discovering' Ustimenko that late and for a total chaos on the defensive end. In general, I don't agree that he is a horrible coach, but he is more like Varnakov than like Bragin though, imo. I think he deserves a 'thanks' for the Bronze and also for the last year, but can we have Prokhorov now?

About the players, defense was just bad: I mean they fought hard, but positionally were very weak and extremely error prone. Samorukov was useful in the attack, but someone has to remind him that he also has some defensive responsibilities.
Since I started to talk about the bad things, I need to mention Alexeyev and Bitsadze, they were a huge dissapointment, I mean, they were supposed to lead the team, not to sit together in the penaty box Vs. Finland. I can think that Bitsadze might have some health issues though, as he didn't take faceoffs in the Bronze medal game. I also didn't like Maksimov, as it looked like he was just trying to shoot from every position. Also I expected more from Koltygin.
About the positive things, there was Chekhovich-Lipanov-Svechnikov line (although Svechnikov looked a bit out of gas Vs Finland), especially wanted to mention Lipanov, as he didn't have very much points, but caried some huge workload there. Toropchenko was trying to be a poor man's Kostin and he actually did very well. I was also extremely happy to find out that Slepets is interested in hockey again.
About the GK, it's not like Zhukov played bad, he was actually very good, but those soft goals... :shakehead That's why I'm blaming Golubovich: we had a goalie issue since Tarasov's injury and if he would've used Ustimenko in the WJAC and the 5 nations tournament, we might be not so dependent on Zhukov.

And yes, Kostin was badly missed.
 
Pavel Buchnevich

Pavel Buchnevich

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Dec 8, 2013
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Caser said:
Bronze medal, first medal since Kucherov&Co, iirc. As usual some thoughts.

About Golubovich, I give credit to him for finally switching from the 'top6/bottom6' to the 'middle six' concept. About his roster selections, I personally would replace Maksimov with Kravtsov and Kalabushkin with Rodionychev and basically that's it, so maybe I don't blame him here as much as others do. There are things I do blame him for though: for 'discovering' Ustimenko that late and for a total chaos on the defensive end. In general, I don't agree that he is a horrible coach, but he is more like Varnakov than like Bragin though, imo. I think he deserves a 'thanks' for the Bronze and also for the last year, but can we have Prokhorov now?

About the players, defense was just bad: I mean they fought hard, but positionally were very weak and extremely error prone. Samorukov was useful in the attack, but someone has to remind him that he also has some defensive responsibilities.
Since I started to talk about the bad things, I need to mention Alexeyev and Bitsadze, they were a huge dissapointment, I mean, they were supposed to lead the team, not to sit together in the penaty box Vs. Finland. I can think that Bitsadze might have some health issues though, as he didn't take faceoffs in the Bronze medal game. I also didn't like Maksimov, as it looked like he was just trying to shoot from every position. Also I expected more from Koltygin.
About the positive things, there was Chekhovich-Lipanov-Svechnikov line (although Svechnikov looked a bit out of gas Vs Finland), especially wanted to mention Lipanov, as he didn't have very much points, but caried some huge workload there. Toropchenko was trying to be a poor man's Kostin and he actually did very well. I was also extremely happy to find out that Slepets is interested in hockey again.
About the GK, it's not like Zhukov played bad, he was actually very good, but those soft goals... :shakehead That's why I'm blaming Golubovich: we had a goalie issue since Tarasov's injury and if he would've used Ustimenko in the WJAC and the 5 nations tournament, we might be not so dependent on Zhukov.

And yes, Kostin was badly missed.
Click to expand...

How did Galenyuk play? Was he part of the group of players you are referring to for playing bad defense? I wasn't able to watch many matches of any team in this tournament, was too busy.

And while I think having more goalie depth couldn't have hurt, I'm not sure it really matters. Goalies are not like defensemen and forwards who you can give more or less ice time during the course of a game depending on how they are playing. There's no half-measure with goalies. If Zhukov is punished for a soft goal, he has to come out, probably for the full match, which I think would be a little much, considering even you said it yourself, he was on the whole very good.
 

Yakushev72

Registered User
Dec 27, 2010
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Can't leave the subject without remembering Dmitri Samorukov's Flying Circus! The full array of selfish and misguided plays were on full display today. Like in the First Period when he carries the puck in on a 3-on-2 break, and instead of passing to a breaking winger (why is he carrying the puck in in the first place?), he instead shows off his behind the back, under the right leg and over the left elbow drop pass. The beauty of the fancy maneuver was diminished by the fact that it was immediately intercepted and it took a literal miracle save to keep it out of the Russian net.

Time after time, Samorukov carried the puck across the blue line and, instead of passing to some of the many teammates who had wide open paths to the goal, selfishly hung on to the puck in order to try to make a play all by himself. You know, scouts in the arena who were only interested in watching Samorukov would be disappointed if they couldn't just focus on him and screw the rest of the team. He declined to pass to numerous wide open teammates in order to show off his individual skills.

I don't blame Samorukov. Golubovitch is responsible for accomplishing a team game, and he should have given Samorukov a lot of additional bench time for failing to realize that he wasn't alone out there.
 
Caser

Caser

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Pavel Buchnevich said:
How did Galenyuk play? Was he part of the group of players you are referring to for playing bad defense? I wasn't able to watch many matches of any team in this tournament, was too busy.

And while I think having more goalie depth couldn't have hurt, I'm not sure it really matters. Goalies are not like defensemen and forwards who you can give more or less ice time during the course of a game depending on how they are playing. There's no half-measure with goalies. If Zhukov is punished for a soft goal, he has to come out, probably for the full match, which I think would be a little much, considering even you said it yourself, he was on the whole very good.
Click to expand...

Galenyuk didn't look much better or worse than other D guys to me, but I guess it is not bad considering that he is a year younger.

About goalies, I'm not saying that Zhukov should be benched, I meant that Ustimenko wasn't even given a chance to fight for the starters position, just because noone will go with a goalie that didn't play for the NT before.
 
Alessandro Seren Rosso

Alessandro Seren Rosso

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Yakushev72 said:
Can't leave the subject without remembering Dmitri Samorukov's Flying Circus! The full array of selfish and misguided plays were on full display today. Like in the First Period when he carries the puck in on a 3-on-2 break, and instead of passing to a breaking winger (why is he carrying the puck in in the first place?), he instead shows off his behind the back, under the right leg and over the left elbow drop pass. The beauty of the fancy maneuver was diminished by the fact that it was immediately intercepted and it took a literal miracle save to keep it out of the Russian net.

Time after time, Samorukov carried the puck across the blue line and, instead of passing to some of the many teammates who had wide open paths to the goal, selfishly hung on to the puck in order to try to make a play all by himself. You know, scouts in the arena who were only interested in watching Samorukov would be disappointed if they couldn't just focus on him and screw the rest of the team. He declined to pass to numerous wide open teammates in order to show off his individual skills.

I don't blame Samorukov. Golubovitch is responsible for accomplishing a team game, and he should have given Samorukov a lot of additional bench time for failing to realize that he wasn't alone out there.
Click to expand...

To my opinion, you are too harsh on him. This is also what the CHL makes to our guys... I remember seeing the same behavior on Kugryshev in his early days.
 

Yakushev72

Registered User
Dec 27, 2010
4,550
372
Alessandro Seren Rosso said:
To my opinion, you are too harsh on him. This is also what the CHL makes to our guys... I remember seeing the same behavior on Kugryshev in his early days.
Click to expand...

No, it is not me being too harsh...its about Golubovich not being harsh enough. There is no such thing as a good coach who allows individual egos to dictate the play in a game. All-out team effort results in wins for the team, whereas selfish individualistic play creates the situation where the team is lucky to compete for Bronze. Look at the number of turnovers that Samorukov created against the USA and Finland that resulted in goals against because he was only interested in showing off for the scouts.

When he was on the ice, the other Russian skaters might just as well have skated back to the bench and rested until Samorukov turned over the puck! He is too young to be allowed to make those decisions on his own - the coach has to intervene on behalf of the team by relegating him to passing out water bottles on the bench.
 

Yakushev72

Registered User
Dec 27, 2010
4,550
372
cska78 said:
They still did better, than last year, medal is a medal.
Click to expand...

They showed very good depth and overall talent. There were low expectations for guys like Toropchenko, Slepets, Koltygin, Klisunov, Rubinchik, Galenyuk, and others, but all of them showed excellent talent and effort, and were a major surprise. The emergence of guys for whom expectations were low suggests that there is more depth than anticipated.
 
Caser

Caser

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May 21, 2013
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Alexander Zybin is the U18 NT head coach at least at the moment, first camp roster contains only players that had spent last season in Russia, but it has been mentioned that later this month there will be a second part of the camp, so I'd suspect that there will be changes in the roster then.
 
Caser

Caser

@RUSProspects
May 21, 2013
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Roster from the last practice before the Hlinka's (so probably that's the final one):

GK
Amir Miftakhov
Denis Rybalkin

D
Gleb Babintsev
Danila Galenyuk
Roman Kalinichenko
Anton Malyshev
Nikita Okhotyuk
Nikita Solopanov
Bogdan Zhilyakov
Danila Zhuravlyov

FW
Damir Bilyalov
Grigoriy Denisenko
Danila Dyadenkin
Matvei Guskov
Ruslan Iskhakov
Pavel Rotenberg
Nikita Rtishchev
Maxim Shabanov
Yegor Sokolov
Maxim Tsybin
Dmitriy Zavgorodniy
Alexander Zhabreyev
 
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