The 2018-19 Kontinental Hockey League season is reaching its climax and CSKA Moscow are looking like the strongest contenders to clinch the trophy.
With over 80 percent of the regular season completed, the Moscow side have already booked their Gagarin Cup play-off spot and have been the best team in the competition so far, leading SKA Saint Petersburg in the Western Conference by five points at the All-Star break. In the Eastern Conference, Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg have also been in good form, and they hold a nine point lead over a chasing pack that includes Avangard Omsk, Ak Bars Kazan, Metallurg Magnitogorsk and Barys Astana, all of which have already qualified for the play-offs.
It is no surprise to see both CSKA Moscow and St Petersburg setting the pace in the West, as both teams were highly rated pre-season according to the implied probabilities on the bigbetbookmakers.com site. Two-time champions and last season’s Continental Cup winners St Petersburg were slightly favoured ahead of the Moscow team, but CSKA have been a rising force in this competition, winning the Continental Cup three seasons in a row between 2015 and 2017 and finishing as runners-up to Ak Bars Kazan last season, and they’ve continued to improve.
The key to CSKA’s dominance has been their astonishing defensive strength. CSKA have been impregnable in January, shutting out four consecutive teams, including the dominant team in the East, Yekaterinburg. And at the other end of the ice, they’ve been racking up the goals, with the likes of Konstantin Okulov and Anton Slepyshev making sure that the team capitalises on their solid defensive work. Based on their current form, it will take a huge effort for one of their rivals to stop them winning their first ever Gagarin Cup.
Their strongest challengers in the West, St Petersburg, can boast the tournament’s leading point scorer in Nikita Gusev, but suffered two disappointing defeats before the All-Star break and could be running out of steam at the wrong time, although having already qualified for the play-offs, they have a healthy cushion over Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, the third-placed team in the West.
Lokomotiv and Jokerit, of Helsinki in turn have a lead over five teams, all fighting for a play-off place, and separated by ten points. Of those, Dynamo Moscow are leading the way, thanks to the goalscoring exploits of Vadim Shipachyov and Dmitry Kagarlitsky, although they will need some point-scoring support from the rest of the squad if they are to compete with the big guns in the play-offs.
In the East, defending champions Ak Bars Kazan have clinched a play-off spot, but they haven’t been as impressive as last season, and could struggle to match either Yekaterinburg or Omsk if they meet in the last eight. Barys Astana are also finishing the season strong, and they have shown plenty of fighting qualities in becoming the first non-Russian team to book a play-off place this season.
