Last night, Atlant's CEO Andrei Berebko and sports director Ravil Iskhakov last night announced that Fedor Kanareikin has resigned as headcoach and his assistant Valeri Bragin would assume the post. The announcement followed Atlant's 0-6 defeat to Salavat on Monday. The resignation of Kanareikin, who has coached Atlant for two years, does not come as a surprise. Atlant has struggled ever since the pre-season, and the expensive team reinforcements with Zherdev, Novotny, Gerber and Semin hasn't had any effect. The team has lost six of its nine latest games and firing Kanareikin seemed to be the only option left. Kanareikin became the head coach of Atlant on 4 January 2008. During his time as head coach, Atlant won 71 games and lost 33.

Meanwhile, Sibir Novosibirsk also kicked their head coach, Vladimir Semenov.  Sibir has 20 points in 19 games and is well outside the playoff-zone. Sibir's fans have wanted to get rid of Semenov for a long time, and in the end the patience of Sibir's management simply fizzled out. Sibir will now be looking for a new coach. There's not a whole lot of options left, but in the meantime Andrei Tarasenko will act as a working head coach.

Meanwhile. There will be more coaches to go in the coming weeks. Dinamo Riga's Julius Šupler could very well be the next in line. 

One coach that is relatively safe is Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, the coach of KHL Champion, Ak Bars. Ak Bars is in deep crisis and is off to its worst start ever in the RSL/KHL. After yesterday's 2-5 loss to Metallurg Novokuznetsk, Ak Bars dropped out of the playoff zone and is now ranked 17th in a combined KHL table. Bilyaletdinov, however, still has a tremendous amount of reputation in stock, and Ak Bars would probably rather prefer to kick the whole squad of players before they kick Bilyaletdinov. Swedish goaltender, Mikael Tellqvist could very well become the next player to be released from the team. The speculation about Tellqvist has been going on for some time--ever since the preseason actually. It didn't take long before Tellqvist lost his position as starting goaltender, a position that went to the young and promising, Stanislav Galimov, but since Galimov has also struggled recently, Ak Bars is looking for a replacement for Tellqvist. Here, Ak Bars has zoomed in on Lukko Rauma's Petri Vehanen. Vehanen has had tremendous success in the Finnish SM-Liiga with a GAA of 1.45 and SVS% of 94.9 in 13 games for table leader, Lukko. Vehanen's agent, Krister Kaukinen has confirmed that something is in the making.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

EASTERN CONFERENCE

GAME SUMMARIES 27 October 2009

Amur Khabarovsk - Lada Togliatti 3-1 (0-0, 2-1, 1-0)

0-1 25:51 Sergei Sevostyanov 3 (Chernikov, Panov)

1-1 27:42 Alexei Shirokov 2 (Pratt, Ling) PP

2-1 33:17 Vitali Shulakov (Ling)

3-1 Ruslan Khasanshin 9 (Kopeikin) SH-EN

AMU 4x2 + 1x10 (Arekaev), LAD 3x2, SOG: 32-26, Att.: 7100

Goaltenders: Moss (25/26, 96.2%) - Koshechkin (29/31, 93.5%, 2.02)

Sibir Novosibirsk - Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk 2-3 (1-0, 0-1, 1-2)

1-0 10:22 Vladimir Tarasenko 5 (Lawson, Tarasov)

1-1 29:50 Maksim Pestushko 6 (Persson, Demagin)

2-1 44:00 Denis Kartsev 4 (Sokolov) PP

2-2 45:55 Igor Emeleev 1 (Khoryakov, Kruchinin)

2-3 53:26 Sergei Demagin 3 (Pestushko, Razin) PP2

SIB 7x2, NEF 6x2, SOG: 21-16, Att.: 6000

Goaltenders: Lawson (13/16, 81.3%, 3.01) - Kasutin (19/21, 91.5%)

Metallurg Novokuznetsk - AK Bars Kazan 5-2 (1-0, 2-1, 2-1)

1-0 00:22 Evgeni Orlov 4 (Tatarinov)

1-1 31:16 Aleksei Badyukov 3 (Obukhov)

2-1 34:41 Maksim Galanov 4 (Kapus) PP2

3-1 35:42 Dmitri Dudarev 2 (Orlov, Bumagin) PP

3-2 51:13 Evgeni Medvedev 1 (Zaripov, Immonen)

4-2 52:46 Jiri Marusak 2 (Polischuk, Vishnyakov) PP

5-2 56:26 Denis Stasyuk 3 (Orlov)

MET 3x2, BAR 4x2, SOG: 18-38, Att.: 3600

Goaltenders: Bobrovski (36/38, 94.7%) - Galimov (13/18, 72.2%)

Avtomobilist Ekaterinburg - Lokomotiv Yaroslavl 3-6 (1-3, 1-3, 1-0)

0-1 01:19 Sergei Konkov 6 (Churilov, Galimov)

0-2 12:53 Gennadi Churilov 6 (Konkov, Galimov)

1-2 16:30 Stanislav Zhmakin 1 (Khomutov, Kalachik)

1-3 18:20 Ivan Tkachenko 3 (Korolev, Afansenkov)

1-4 23:50 Vitali Vishnevski 2 (Vasicek, Mikhnov) PP

1-5 24:58 Ivan Tkachenko 4 (Korolev)

2-5 31:52 Stanislav Zhmakin 2 (Kalachik)

2-6 39:25 Stanislav Konkov 3 (Churilov) PP

3-6 57:34 Igor Magogin 3 (Simakov) PP

AVT 6x2, LOK 6x2, SOG: 34-30, Att.: 4000

Goaltenders: Franskevych (9/14, 64.3%, 11.03) 27:12 Lisutin (15/16, 93.8%, 1.83) - Gaiduchenko (31/34, 91.2%)

Metallurg Magnitogorsk - HC MVD 3-2 (1-1, 1-0, 1-1)

1-0 03:02 Toni Koivisto 1 (S. Fedorov, Chistov)

1-1 11:06 Alex Ugarov 6 (Tsvetkov, Kokarev) 

2-1 30:45 Stanislav Chistov 7 (S. Fedorov)

2-2 41:03 Konstantin Volkov 6 (Novak, Ellison) PP

3-2 44:11 Jaroslav Kudrna 7 (Chistov) PP

MET 6x2, MVD 2x2, SOG: 25-23, Att.: 5115

Goaltenders: Proskuryakov (21/23, 91.3%) - A. Volkov (22/25, 92%, 3.06)

Traktor Chelyabinsk - Spartak Moscow 4-3 SO (0-1, 2-0, 1-2, 0-0, 1-0)

0-1 14:17 Jaroslav Obsut 4 (Lewandoski, Radivojevic) PP2

1-1 35:57 Nikita Korovkin 1 (Nikolishyn) PP

2-1 36:13 Andrei Popov 10 (Ramzi, Dagenais)

2-2 41:14 Dmitri Upper 5 (Pokrovsky, Radivojevic) PP2

3-2 50:11 Konstantin Plaskin 1 (Galkin, Skrachkov) PP

3-3 59:31 Dmitri Upper 6 (Knyazev, Lewandowski) 6-on-4

4-3 65:00 Evgeni Skachkov

SO: Gusmanov, Skachkov scored - Upper, Lyuduchin missed

TRA 11x2 + 1x10 (Skachkov), SPA 12x2 + 1x10 (Lyamin), SOG: 26-40, Att.: 6470

Goaltenders: Alistarov (37/40, 92.5%, 2.44) - Konobry (23/26, 88.5, 2.82)

Torpedo Niznhy-Novgorod - Vityaz Chekhov 5-4 (2-3, 1-0, 2-1)

0-1 03:18 Denis Sergeev 1 (Belokon)

0-2 03:55 Aleksander Romanov 4 (Bobrov)

1-2 04:43 Ilya Krikunov 5 (Bednar, Kosourov)

2-2 11:09 Jaroslav Bednar 6 (Novopashin, Kosourov)

2-3 15:05 Denis Sergeev 2 (Belokon, Ryazantsev) PP

3-3 36:40 Mikhail Varnakov 5 (Nikitenko)

4-3 45:46 Mikhail Varnakov 6 (Shastin) PP

4-4 49:15 Aleksander Ryazantsev 4 (Megalinsky)

5-4 55:08 Andrei Nikitenko 2 (Varnakov)

TOR 6x2, VIT 4x2, SOG: 39-31, Att.:5500

Goaltenders: Bruckler (27/31, 87.1%) - Zvyagin (34/39, 87.2%, 5.04)