Khabarovsk Guardian “Cupid” Igor Bobkov In an interview with , said that the goalkeeper “Metallurgy” Ilya Nabokov He liked his game from the very beginning, and later the rest of the players of the Magnitogorsk club proved that they deserved the title.
Last season, the Khabarovsk club reached the Gagarin Cup playoffs, but lost to Metallurg (2-4 in the series) in the first round. “Metallurg” defeated Yaroslavl “Lokomotiv” with a score of 4:0 in the Gagarin Cup final series.
— When you played the first round with Magnitka, could you have thought that they would become champions?
— I won’t lie, I was surprised that it was Metallurg that won the Gagarin Cup. But I immediately noticed, even at the end of the season, that Ilya Nabokov is the goalkeeper who can become a champion. It was obvious how well he played.
— He was cut from the MHL, it was his first season in adult hockey.
— When I first saw him, I was still playing for Avtomobilist. We played the first match against Magnitogorsk at the Romazan tournament. I think we beat them with a score of 5:4 in overtime. And Ilya was playing there. After the match, I wrote to the guys from Metallurg: “What kind of youngster? Very good! This is your future number one.”
Because even then I saw his excellent technique, his inclinations were visible. He has very quick feet. He moves very skillfully, returning to his position even when it seems that the goal is lost. It is not just a question of reaction, it is a question of mobility.
And when we played the first round with Magnitka, I didn’t see that it was a champion team. But they had a champion goalkeeper. As the playoffs progressed, Metallurg gained momentum and refuted my opinion. And their final with Lokomotiv was very unexpected for me. The Lokomotiv we played against was a champion team. I thought Yaroslavl would win the Gagarin Cup.
But this is hockey. “Magnitka” seemed more collected and balanced in the most important series of the year. For me, there were no clearly defined leaders. But there was a real team in which three forwards and each pair of defenders could score. Anyone could solve the game. Before the final, they lost their captain, the main defender Yegor Yakovlev, but this did not affect the team in any way. “All members of the lineup were dangerous,” Bobkov told .
Bobkov has been defending the colours of “Amur” since 2023; previously, the hockey player played for “Admiral”, “Avangard”, “Avtomobilist” and “Ak Bars”.
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