Condition of Eastern European hockey.

airbus1094

Registered User
Feb 27, 2013
319
8
Philly
I was wondering what the condition of hockey in Ukraine and Belarus. Obviously all post-soviet states had a big drop in talent around the 90s, but has it rebounded since then. Belarus u18 is in D1A and Ukraine is in D1B, any good players there? Have the KHL/VHL/MHL teams helped at all? Oh, and also have any good players defected to Russia (I know some from KZ have)?
 

smitty10

Registered User
Aug 6, 2009
9,805
2,643
Toronto
I was wondering what the condition of hockey in Ukraine and Belarus. Obviously all post-soviet states had a big drop in talent around the 90s, but has it rebounded since then. Belarus u18 is in D1A and Ukraine is in D1B, any good players there? Have the KHL/VHL/MHL teams helped at all? Oh, and also have any good players defected to Russia (I know some from KZ have)?

Belarus is far ahead of Ukraine in terms of talent and development. Ukraine has been making positive steps towards rebuilding their hockey status, but who knows what will happen there now. I don't know of any Belarusians defecting to Russia, however every couple years there will be a Ukrainian-born player or two on the Russian WJC team (Zherdev, Sobchenko, Tkachyov, Zemchenko, etc.).

Both countries aren't producing mass amounts of NHL talent. Belarus definitely has the upper-hand though and produces a lot of KHL players and some NHLers. The Kostitsyn's, Grabovski and Korobov have all played in the NHL in the past couple of seasons, while Gotovets, Gavrus and Hrabarenka are all NHL prospects. Ukraine on the other hand has nobody worth mentioning. A couple of below average KHL players, a WHL player (Padakin is actually pretty good) and an ageing core are about all they have. Maybe if they can re-naturalize some of the defectors to Russia they'll improve in the short term, but I doubt that will happen.
 

Xokkeu

Registered User
Apr 5, 2012
6,891
193
Frozen
I was wondering what the condition of hockey in Ukraine and Belarus. Obviously all post-soviet states had a big drop in talent around the 90s, but has it rebounded since then. Belarus u18 is in D1A and Ukraine is in D1B, any good players there? Have the KHL/VHL/MHL teams helped at all? Oh, and also have any good players defected to Russia (I know some from KZ have)?

Ukraine's hockey program had a slight hope of recovery with the creation of Donetsk's KHL team, but right now the country has bigger things to worry about.
 

airbus1094

Registered User
Feb 27, 2013
319
8
Philly
Ukraine's hockey program had a slight hope of recovery with the creation of Donetsk's KHL team, but right now the country has bigger things to worry about.

Yes, unfortunately you're right. Do you know where the funding for Donetsk is coming from and if it will continue?
 

loppa*

Guest
I was wondering what the condition of hockey in Ukraine and Belarus. Obviously all post-soviet states had a big drop in talent around the 90s, but has it rebounded since then. Belarus u18 is in D1A and Ukraine is in D1B, any good players there? Have the KHL/VHL/MHL teams helped at all? Oh, and also have any good players defected to Russia (I know some from KZ have)?

This is not true. Belarus did not have a drop. Hockey barley existed in Belarus in 1990. It had what, two or three arenas in the entire country? And look where they got since then. Huge strides in progress and development.
 

Rekin

Registered User
Feb 23, 2014
415
0
Warszawa
In Belarus too the economic conditions were very difficult in the early 1990's and that affected the hockey landscape too quite severely. Only the Lukashenka era (late 1990's onwards) brought the state-orchestrated boom that still continues.
 

J17 Vs Proclamation

Registered User
Oct 29, 2004
8,025
2
Reading.
What does the future hold for Belarus? How many rinks and registered players do they have now and are we beginning to see stronger age groups coming up?
 

Rekin

Registered User
Feb 23, 2014
415
0
Warszawa
More and more, there are over 30 indoor rinks at the moment and alone this year about 20 new ones should be finished. There are over 7255 registered players of which 3219 are senior and 3977 junior. Thus only 59 are women.

And the future? Nothing good I'd say. Without extreme amounts of public money such a system can't be financed, and at the moment it's only about the political fate of one man. Sooner or later he will inevitably be gone, and that's game over then for these projects as well.
 

kunabai

Registered User
Aug 10, 2011
201
13
Minsk
This is not true. Belarus did not have a drop. Hockey barley existed in Belarus in 1990. It had what, two or three arenas in the entire country? And look where they got since then. Huge strides in progress and development.

google, for example, sergei fedorov and yunost minsk hockey school ;)

quality of hockey schools can overcome lack of rinks, you know :laugh:

still situation is much better in this area now

and belarus DID have a drop and now its hockey program stagnates, though it would be a long conversation to have

I don't know of any Belarusians defecting to Russia

we have plenty of young players in russia, and the most noticeable is pavel karnaukhov - http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=268038 (his elder brother mikhail plays goalie for dinamo-shinnik). he's turned down all the invitations to belarusian junior national teams. that's definitely not the biggest problem of our hockey but still one of current interest
 

smitty10

Registered User
Aug 6, 2009
9,805
2,643
Toronto
google, for example, sergei fedorov and yunost minsk hockey school ;)

quality of hockey schools can overcome lack of rinks, you know :laugh:

still situation is much better in this area now

and belarus DID have a drop and now its hockey program stagnates, though it would be a long conversation to have



we have plenty of young players in russia, and the most noticeable is pavel karnaukhov - http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=268038 (his elder brother mikhail plays goalie for dinamo-shinnik). he's turned down all the invitations to belarusian junior national teams. that's definitely not the biggest problem of our hockey but still one of current interest

Looks like he'll be drafted if he continues to improve. Hopefully he decides to represent Belarus and not Russia...
 

YARR123

Registered User
Oct 30, 2010
1,718
3
More and more, there are over 30 indoor rinks at the moment and alone this year about 20 new ones should be finished. There are over 7255 registered players of which 3219 are senior and 3977 junior. Thus only 59 are women.

And the future? Nothing good I'd say. Without extreme amounts of public money such a system can't be financed, and at the moment it's only about the political fate of one man. Sooner or later he will inevitably be gone, and that's game over then for these projects as well.

20 new ones seriously? How is that not good for the future?

Even if it is about the decisions of one man, once the rinks are built, they're built, and that should be pretty huge for hockey infrastructure. Having 50 rinks in a not-so-huge country as belarus is pretty decent. One would think that helps to introduce more players and thus more competition?
 

kunabai

Registered User
Aug 10, 2011
201
13
Minsk
20 new ones seriously? How is that not good for the future?

Even if it is about the decisions of one man, once the rinks are built, they're built, and that should be pretty huge for hockey infrastructure. Having 50 rinks in a not-so-huge country as belarus is pretty decent. One would think that helps to introduce more players and thus more competition?

missed this quite exaggeration - these 20 new ones just were planned and this plans were set in mid-2000, pre-crisis, when economics were much more stable. nowadays no way they will be built - for example, in some belarusian cities, such as mozyr, construction of ice rink has frozen, more than 4 years they try to build it in shklov and so on. in some cities of aforementioned plan this construction hasn't even started while these rinks must have been finished in 2013 or 2014. ice palace in orsha which was set to open in 2012, finally has been finished only a few months ago and so on.
maybe i'm missing some - but from this plan - http://hockey.by/icearenas/arena-construction/ - only rinks in gorki, orsha and chizovka-arena are operating.

so rekin posts are quite on point, though the problems have already begun
 

GX

Registered User
Dec 28, 2011
936
280
20 new ones seriously? How is that not good for the future?

Even if it is about the decisions of one man, once the rinks are built, they're built, and that should be pretty huge for hockey infrastructure. Having 50 rinks in a not-so-huge country as belarus is pretty decent. One would think that helps to introduce more players and thus more competition?
One thing is to build the rink, another one is to have all the public money in order for them to function. Whenever Sasha is gone, there is a notable risk that many of those rinks will get abandoned.

Btw, how are they financed now? Are those mainly local municipalities or rather government/sports ministry funding? If it is the first one, the risks undoubtedly is way smaller.
 

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