Dinamo Riga 17/18 - Predicted Gargarin Cup Champions!

[Rigafan]

That's actually a bit shocking. If Dinamo played in SHL, they would not lead the largest budget competition by a large margin, and I think the budget in the SHL is even increasing due to the TV contracts getting renewed. When I win the €90M jackpot in the lottery, I'll spend it on a Dinamo Riga Gagarin Cup.

Well hurry up and win! We could do with a more entertaining season next year, please!

 

[HockeyBeherit]

Well hurry up and win! We could do with a more entertaining season next year, please!

I'm trying my best, ok???

 

[OscarsCards]

Great season for Indrasis. He's only 3rd Latvian player who have scored 40+ points in a season and and 4th who have scored 20+ goals, that's awesome.
20+ goal scorers:
Daugavins 22 in 56 GP (14-15 Dynamo Moscow)
Darzins 21 in 45 GP (10-11 Dinamo Riga)
Karsums 21 in 54 GP (11-12 Dinamo Riga)
Indrasis 21 in 56 GP (17-18 Dinamo Riga)

40+ point scorers:
Darzins 44 (21+23) in 56 GP (10-11 Dinamo Riga)
M. Redlihs 44 (13+33) in 54 GP (11-12 Dinamo Riga)
Indrašis 42 (21+21) in 56 GP (17-18 Dinamo Riga)
M. Redlihs 41 (16+25) in 54 GP (10-11 Dinamo Riga)

The two youngsters were announced as players of the week and in these 10 seasons there has been only 4 players to receive this honor:
Razgals (F) Jan. 8
Gegeris (F) Jan. 29

K. Redlihs was announced as the D of the week in Nov. 27, only 4th Latvian D to receive this honor.

Kalnins G was really solid, his stats are literally the same as last season. He had 12 W last season and 11 W in this season, even Masalskis had only 3 10+ W in his 8 season KHL career.

There were 3 U20 players in this season:
Gegeris (F) 3 G which is repeated high in 34 GP
Berzins (F) 1 G in 7 GP
Svars (D) 6 GP

In these 10 KHL seasons has played 15 U20 Latvian players and only 4 players has scored a goal and 8 players scored a point, so I would say that this season for our few U20 KHL players has been good.

My subjective player ratings in this season for Dinamo Riga players:
A - Indrasis, Kalnins, Darzins
B - M. Redlihs,
D+ - Razgals, Batna, Gegeris
D - is for a defense
D- (as dissapointment) - Jevpalovs, Lipsbergs
F (as I hope they will FIND a suitable club) - Jelisejevs (as he actually did and I'm happy for the guy), Ri. Bukarts (landed on Dinamo Riga from Zlin (CZE) and will end his season in Eisbaren Berlin (DEL), E. Kulda (please man, you can be better than this).
Z (as for cancer) - Pavlovs, Jerofejevs.

What if next season happens or not there could be some interesting stuff going on.
Expired contracts - Daugavins, Sotnieks
This could be their last season in their club - Karsums, Kulda, Bartulis (cancer).
Coaching staff - Skudra (true meaning of cancer), Abols (would love it), by the way I saw a good ol' Supler in Arena and I had a thought.
Our Czech boys - Ro. Bukarts, Freibergs, Dzerins and Cibulskis who are playing well in Czech league.
Sprukts could give a lot of experience.

I'd love to see Kalnins and Gudlevskis duo in the net, that would be awesome.

 

[Alessandro Seren Rosso]

What's wrong with Bartulis?

 

[SoundAndFury]

Roberts Bukarts had pretty amazing season for Zlin leading team in scoring by whopping 18 points and having +15 rating (2nd best was +4 I think) and he just announced he's leaving (makes sense). If Riga is still in the KHL he has to be on this team, right? Right?

I get it's unlikely but he has to be the target. Overall, really curious where he will end up. Latvia didn't have top level talent playing in Europe outside of the KHL in a long time.

 

[SoundAndFury]

As I wrote a post for KHL contraction thread I realized how many Latvians are FAs this year and prices are at all time low. I wonder how much would it cost to collect something similar to this team:

Kalnins - Gudlevskis

Kundratek - Bartulis
Galvins - Kulda
Redlihs - Sotnieks
Balinskis - Zile

Darzins - legit 1st line center - Indrasis
Bukarts - Tičar - Daugavins
Kenins - Dzerins - Redlihs
Jevpalovs - Bicevskis - Meija

I mean this is pretty damn close to a playoff team. Sure, it would make more sense to sign imports to the Bukarts or Kenins slots but at the end of the day this wouldn't be even THAT much more expensive than the current team. One can dream. If SKA decided to send players they don't need to Riga instead of Spartak this would be pretty close to reality.

 

[remben]

As I wrote a post for KHL contraction thread I realized how many Latvians are FAs this year and prices are at all time low. I wonder how much would it cost to collect something similar to this team:

Kalnins - Gudlevskis

Kundratek - Bartulis
Galvins - Kulda
Redlihs - Sotnieks
Balinskis - Zile

Darzins - legit 1st line center - Indrasis
Bukarts - Tičar - Daugavins
Kenins - Dzerins - Redlihs
Jevpalovs - Bicevskis - Meija

I mean this is pretty damn close to a playoff team. Sure, it would make more sense to sign imports to the Bukarts or Kenins slots but at the end of the day this wouldn't be even THAT much more expensive than the current team. One can dream. If SKA decided to send players they don't need to Riga instead of Spartak this would be pretty close to reality.

Yes, this team would be really nice. What about Kaspars Daugavins in the center position in a line with Darzins and Indrasis?

About SKA sending some players to Riga, would be for sure a dream.

 

[SoundAndFury]

Yes, this team would be really nice. What about Kaspars Daugavins in the center position in a line with Darzins and Indrasis?

I hate those wing to center conversions. It's poor man's solution. If you have no other option - sure. But I think getting a real center is by far a superior move. Also playing Daugavins there would open up holes on the 2nd line as well.

 

[HockeyBeherit]

According to a Finnish sports media, Dinamo Riga was 27th (dead last) on money spent on players with 4,6 million euros. Teams in front of Riga in that list were:

1st SKA, 36,3 m€, paid 4,7 m€ worth of cap penalties, which is the whole Dinamo player budget + a decent player in the Finnish league
--------------------------
20th Barys Astana, 8,4 m€
21st-23rd Neftehimik Nizhnekamsk, Yugra Khanty-Mansijsk, Severstal Cherepovets, 6,6 m€
24th-25th Slovan Bratislava, Admiral Vladivostok, 6,5 m€
26th Lada Togliatti, 5,5 m€
27th Dinamo Riga, 4,6 m€

Here we can see, Dinamo is a countrymile behind the rest of the KHL. It will be no wonder if Dinamo decides to fold it up.

By 19-20 season there will be an ease to the misery, as the KHL moves to hard salary system, which will not allow teams to pass the set ~11 m€ salary cap, minus one "star player" per team. If by then Dinamo would be able to get a new rich sponsor (huge businesses of Latvia, we need you), we may not be that screw'd anymore. Of course that tightens up the competition within the average teams, so everything needs to be done flawlessly, if you want to win it all. There must be hockey professionals in Latvia, right!

 

[powerplaymaker]

According to a Finnish sports media, Dinamo Riga was 27th (dead last) on money spent on players with 4,6 million euros. Teams in front of Riga in that list were:

1st SKA, 36,3 m€, paid 4,7 m€ worth of cap penalties, which is the whole Dinamo player budget + a decent player in the Finnish league

From what I understand the budgets doesen't contain the "star player" salaries. So SKA:s budged is actually even bigger. Kovy gets what? 5-10 million € and so on... Big teams have also big bonuses. SKA players get 200k each for getting to playoffs and so on...

 

[HockeyBeherit]

From what I understand the budgets doesen't contain the "star player" salaries.

Now I wouldn't bet my house on this, but I think budget and the actual cap hit are two different things here. So technically you are not wrong about the star player thing, but you would obviously still have to pay them money, which has to be in the budget, from the financial point of view. So in SKA's cap hit Kovie (and Magic Pavel?) would not be "visible", but you'd still have to budget the money for them. That's a ridiculous amount of money anyways.

-

Now what comes to Dinamo folding it up, Yugra and Lada have done so. That got me thinking, will Dinamo quit after all? See, in my eyes, it is absolutely vital for the KHL to have teams outside of Russia. 2/3 European teams are struggling right now. If the KHL wants to expand more to the west, I think they would need to have Bratislava and/or Riga to be successful with Helsinki to gain better reputation across Europe. If European teams had better success (=a realistic chance to beat St. Petersburg and/or Moscow), I think it would quiet down the talks of the refs and the system not allowing non-Russian teams to win, which would make the KHL a ton more interesting league to play in. I'm interested to see what the new salary cap system brings with itself, maybe the Gagarin cup finally out of Mother Russia?

 

[Rigafan]

I think we'll hang on for the next season at least. Wingas or whoever Gazprom name it will give us some money.

 

[powerplaymaker]

I think we'll hang on for the next season at least. Wingas or whoever Gazprom name it will give us some money.

From what I understand they are considering only Russian teams to leave. When the hard salary cap hits, its gonna be a good thing for smaller teams like Dinamo Riga.

 

[Jussi]

From what I understand they are considering only Russian teams to leave. When the hard salary cap hits, its gonna be a good thing for smaller teams like Dinamo Riga.

How? If the overall salary level drops in KHL, that means Riga will still have trouble luring any star players because other leagues will be more attractive to these players.

 

[SoundAndFury]

How? If the overall salary level drops in KHL, that means Riga will still have trouble luring any star players because other leagues will be more attractive to these players.

Well Riga's problem is it has no money in the first place so lowering the overall KHL salary level can only work for them since the teams won't be able to overpay players hence there will be more players affordable at the same price range.

Players choosing other leagues because of cap situation is irrelevant to Riga since their salaries were at DEL level (at best) anyway so players could have done so all along. Someone like Dzerins did, cap doesn't factor in it in any way.

 

[powerplaymaker]

How? If the overall salary level drops in KHL, that means Riga will still have trouble luring any star players because other leagues will be more attractive to these players.

SoundAndFury has a point. Other teams cant overpay so there will be more competion with teams.

And also the obvious: the hard cap brings teams closer to each other. The difference between teams like Kazan or Ufa is way smaller than now.

 

[Alessandro Seren Rosso]

How? If the overall salary level drops in KHL, that means Riga will still have trouble luring any star players because other leagues will be more attractive to these players.

As said by Chernyshenko salaries will still be about 2.3 times higher in the KHL than in European leagues.
900 millions may be not a lot for 25 men but 1 - players under 21 won't be counted and 2 - bonuses will factor in only for a portion of them.

 

[OscarsCards]

As I wrote a post for KHL contraction thread I realized how many Latvians are FAs this year and prices are at all time low. I wonder how much would it cost to collect something similar to this team:

Kalnins - Gudlevskis

Kundratek - Bartulis
Galvins - Kulda
Redlihs - Sotnieks
Balinskis - Zile

Darzins - legit 1st line center - Indrasis
Bukarts - Tičar - Daugavins
Kenins - Dzerins - Redlihs
Jevpalovs - Bicevskis - Meija

I mean this is pretty damn close to a playoff team. Sure, it would make more sense to sign imports to the Bukarts or Kenins slots but at the end of the day this wouldn't be even THAT much more expensive than the current team. One can dream. If SKA decided to send players they don't need to Riga instead of Spartak this would be pretty close to reality.

Are You ok there buddy?