Zinetul Bilyaletdinov’s “Ak Bars” reached the seventh match of the Gagarin Cup final and the following year was eliminated in the first round by Avtomobilist (1-4 in the series). The experienced coach left his post, saying that he was already tired of the work.
He was replaced by Anvar Gatiyatulin, who himself worked at Traktor, and when he left Chelyabinsk he went to do an internship in Vancouver.
Ak Bars has set a course for a radical restructuring; several leaders immediately left the team. What will the new team be capable of? Why has Anwar, who was previously known as a silent person and seemed to be a closed person, changed so much? We talked about it in an interview.
“I wasn’t talking about speed, that the Ak Bars will be faster”
— It is striking that you have become extremely active in the media. Major interviews take place every week, you communicate with all the journalists. You have never noticed anything like this before!
“And I never avoided it.” It’s just that at my old workplace (“Tractor”) there was someone to talk to. So I focused on coaching.
— So Anvar Gatiyatulin is an open and sociable person? And is it a stereotype that at press conferences they get away with clichés like “Thank you to the audience for your support”?
– That’s not true at all! And at press conferences it’s clear why I try to say the minimum. There’s a lot to say there! But then you watch the match again and see the match differently. The important thing here is not to hook anyone with your words. So I try to think about what I say.
— When you took over the management of Ak Bars, did you immediately understand that the team needed to be radically changed?
— We wanted to see the team as it is now. We have three more matches at the Puchkov tournament, several training sessions, the process is ongoing. We need to look at what works and what doesn’t.
— And what about last season? You have dismissed many veterans. Vadim Shipachev, Dmitry Kagarlitsky, Vyacheslav Voynov, Alexander Radulov… I see quotes in the press, and they seem offensive, disapproving of the Ak Bars leadership.
– Which ones, for example?
— Shipachev says he is supposed to be slow and Kazan will play fast hockey.
— I wasn’t talking about speed. Someone said that somewhere, and then they picked it up. It’s important for us to understand where we can become stronger. We looked at the selection of players. At what moments can we become more active? This is the direction in which the work continues. We will try to convey these thoughts from our coaching staff to the guys in order to build the game around them.
— If you don’t need Radulov, does that mean you’re taking the vector of rejuvenation? Why didn’t Alexander suit you?
— I didn’t say that Radulov and the others you mentioned didn’t suit us. I said that we want to see the team exactly as it is today. And the guys are all respected, they have achieved a lot in hockey. The Russian national team was glorified on the international stage. There were no personal moments here.
“The NHL is not another planet”
— To what extent did your internship with the Vancouver Canucks enrich you and perhaps change your coaching philosophy?
— I learned a lot of new things talking to the coaching staffs of NHL clubs like Vancouver, Carolina and Dallas. Sergei Gonchar helped a lot with that…
— He works at the Canucks headquarters.
— Gonchar organized the trip for me. I immersed myself in the atmosphere of the NHL. In fact, many things resemble the KHL. Each team has its own tactics.
Have I changed my vision of hockey? In principle, I have always tried to play more active hockey. But you understand that the coach looks at the selection of players, what kind of team he has. If he can play actively, it means that he will build this kind of hockey. If the selection of players and their strengths evolve in a different direction, then he can change the model.
— Is the NHL really on another planet? Or not?
– I wouldn’t say that. It’s not another planet. Some things impressed me more, others less. Some times are better for us.
– Which one? One of the players told me that in Colorado they have one massage therapist for the whole team, and in the KHL club they have three or four such specialists.
— I will not go into details. But whether I worked in Chelyabinsk or now at Ak Bars, everything is organized professionally. So no questions arise.
“Kuznetsov has nothing to prove in the KHL”
— Alexander Barabanov is an Olympic champion, a brilliant third-line player. Do you put him in the top three, thinking that Sasha will turn out differently?
– I wouldn’t say that. It seems to me that Alexander could play on the first lines of the NHL. But it turned out that he was not used there. At Ak Bars, we believe that Barabanov is one of the leaders in the locker room, in everyday life and on the ice.
— Your troika is built on the concept that Nick Petan distributes passes, Dmitry Yashkin completes them, and Barabanov, so to speak, carries the piano?
— In my thoughts, yes, probably something like that. But it’s just a theory. We’ll see on the ice how things go for them.
— Evgeny Kuznetsov watched the match between Ak Bars and Kunlun from the stands. You know each other well from Chelyabinsk. What kind of players does our league have?
– He is a world-class player. We all know him since childhood. Of course, for the league, the return of Kuznetsov is a huge plus.
— Will Evgeniy be able to revive his career in Russia?
– And he doesn’t need to reboot, to prove anything to anyone. We know Evgeniy well as a person and a player.
More sports news in our telegram channel .
Source : MatchTV
I’m Emma Smith, a dedicated journalist and avid storyteller. I have been writing for news websites for the past 5 years, reporting on hockey news and delivering in-depth analysis of the sport. In my current role as Author at Athletistic, I write about hockey events from around the world to keep followers up-to-date with what’s happening in the sport.
