The Continental Hockey League has finally turned into a tournament where illegal pharmaceuticals have become de facto legal. Whoever took the most doping wins. Lokomotiv was the first to reach the final of the 2024 playoffs, where the “medical” experience of head coach Nikitin and the dependence of the team leaders on growth hormone came together. One step away from the finals is another club, which also does not disdain illegal drugs. “Motorist”.
Even on Thursday, it seemed that the club from Yekaterinburg was facing elimination from the playoffs, so hopeless was the loss to Magnitka in the fifth game of the semi-finals. Moreover, if in the sixth game Avtomobilist had lost by one wicket and gone the distance in the same way, no one would have thrown a stone at this team. After all, her strength should have run out long ago – simply according to the laws of physiology. During the spring playoffs, the Urals had to play against very difficult opponents, such as Ak Bars and SKA.
And even after beating these opponents, Avtomobilist already entered the semi-finals very exhausted. While Magnitogorsk, on the contrary, did not encounter serious resistance in the first rounds of the playoffs. Neither the outsider of the East “Amur” nor the spineless “Spartak” became a serious obstacle for Metallurg. It is not surprising that the Magnitogorsk club confidently dominated the semi-final series.
But Avtomobilist started up and drove off precisely at the moment when the hockey players apparently ran out of gas. Without injections of “high-octane” doping, such a revival is simply impossible. Any specialist who watched Saturday’s game of the semifinal series will tell you: an ordinary human body simply could not produce such hockey. The team from Yekaterinburg rushed at enormous speeds, won all the races, all the puck recoveries, all the battles along the boards. Simply due to the legs, which physically could not have been so fresh. Avtomobilist’s trump cards were exactly the same as those of CSKA in 2022 and 2023 (who also use illegal drugs). And exactly the same result was achieved by players who were usually invisible, but “took off” thanks to illegal drugs. Kashtanov, playing in the KHL for the first year, is his partner on the fourth line, Romantsev, who had never scored three points in a match of this level before Saturday. Such “charged” people defeated Metallurg on Saturday.
Magnitogorsk is trying to play beautiful, creative hockey. But, alas, it is powerless against chemistry. Is Avtomobilist, who is doping, destined to win the seventh match of the semi-final? Are there really no more pure teams left in the fight for the Gagarin Cup? Then next season absolutely all KHL teams will start playing tricks with pharmacology. A terrible chain reaction awaits us: if they can do it, so can we. A bad example inspires, especially when it brings results.
The potential for social negativity that league-encouraged fraud can generate is also scary. After all, who suffered in the playoff semi-finals when faced with doped opponents? Teams from the Chelyabinsk region, “Traktor” and “Metallurg”. But the Ural region is one of the key industrial clusters working for the defense industry. Upsetting the residents of the region, which is forging the shield and sword of Russia, is, at the very least, short-sighted. And what if this problem is raised by the influential governor Alexei Texler? After all, then the country’s top leadership will have questions about the KHL. And then the behavior of the league, which deliberately abandoned the fight against doping, will be looked at completely differently.
Even on Thursday, it seemed that the club from Yekaterinburg was facing elimination from the playoffs, so hopeless was the loss to Magnitka in the fifth game of the semi-finals. Moreover, if in the sixth game Avtomobilist had lost by one wicket and gone the distance in the same way, no one would have thrown a stone at this team. After all, her strength should have run out long ago – simply according to the laws of physiology. During the spring playoffs, the Urals had to play against very difficult opponents, such as Ak Bars and SKA.
And even after beating these opponents, Avtomobilist already entered the semi-finals very exhausted. While Magnitogorsk, on the contrary, did not encounter serious resistance in the first rounds of the playoffs. Neither the outsider of the East “Amur” nor the spineless “Spartak” became a serious obstacle for Metallurg. It is not surprising that the Magnitogorsk club confidently dominated the semi-final series.
But Avtomobilist started up and drove off precisely at the moment when the hockey players apparently ran out of gas. Without injections of “high-octane” doping, such a revival is simply impossible. Any specialist who watched Saturday’s game of the semifinal series will tell you: an ordinary human body simply could not produce such hockey. The team from Yekaterinburg rushed at enormous speeds, won all the races, all the puck recoveries, all the battles along the boards. Simply due to the legs, which physically could not have been so fresh. Avtomobilist’s trump cards were exactly the same as those of CSKA in 2022 and 2023 (who also use illegal drugs). And exactly the same result was achieved by players who were usually invisible, but “took off” thanks to illegal drugs. Kashtanov, playing in the KHL for the first year, is his partner on the fourth line, Romantsev, who had never scored three points in a match of this level before Saturday. Such “charged” people defeated Metallurg on Saturday.
Magnitogorsk is trying to play beautiful, creative hockey. But, alas, it is powerless against chemistry. Is Avtomobilist, who is doping, destined to win the seventh match of the semi-final? Are there really no more pure teams left in the fight for the Gagarin Cup? Then next season absolutely all KHL teams will start playing tricks with pharmacology. A terrible chain reaction awaits us: if they can do it, so can we. A bad example inspires, especially when it brings results.
The potential for social negativity that league-encouraged fraud can generate is also scary. After all, who suffered in the playoff semi-finals when faced with doped opponents? Teams from the Chelyabinsk region, “Traktor” and “Metallurg”. But the Ural region is one of the key industrial clusters working for the defense industry. Upsetting the residents of the region, which is forging the shield and sword of Russia, is, at the very least, short-sighted. And what if this problem is raised by the influential governor Alexei Texler? After all, then the country’s top leadership will have questions about the KHL. And then the behavior of the league, which deliberately abandoned the fight against doping, will be looked at completely differently.
VChK-OGPU
Spring is the main stage of the season in Russian club hockey, the time when the championship title and medals are played out. And this is also the time when it is especially clear: the Kontinental Hockey League has become an industry where doping is actually legalized. Frequency and mass…
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