Headcoach,Vyacheslav Bykov and his assistant, Igor Zakharkhin have resigned for their positions at CSKA Moscow. With the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver in the horizon, they would need to focus fully on the national team. How will this affect CSKA Moscow?

In early April 2009, Russian hockey felt a earthquake when Vyacheslav Bykov and his assistant Igor Zakharkhin decided to step down from CSKA Moscow in order to work only for the national team. It looked like a wise decision. With the IIHF World Championship and the Olympics near, this is a key period for their national team that need absolute focus from both players and coaches. Aleksandr Eremenko already supported the decision in an interview, and probably many other players will do the same, publicly or not. It was asking too much of Bykov and Zakharkhin to be coaches of a big team and of the national team. In the writer’s opinion, this may work well in such nations like Belarus, France or Kazakhstan, which do have good players, but not the same ambitions as Russia, Canada, Sweden. For them it might be comfortable to have a player who has under the eyes the league’s best player on a regular basis, knowing some of them in person for working together every day. But what work within certain systems, might not work in others. Yes, Russians are the World Champions, but it’s not automatic that they can win every year.

Bykov himself said "the preparation is for us a considerable work, we have to contact and survey numerous candidates. This requires a huge amount of time and it's incompatible with the work in the club". Zakharkhin replied, that "we made the mutual decision to leave from CSKA. - This is because the fact, that in the next season we prospect to work with the national team at the Olympiads in Vancouver, and we want to focus on the preparation of our national team. We won't work with any club for the 2009/10 season". Fastovsky (CSKA's GM) concluded by stating that they left without conflicts and that the club thank them for the great job they've done with the team.
If team Russia probably gets something good from this decision, it's interesting to see what will happen to CSKA. Bykov has been an excellent coach for them too, and thus it's hard to predict anything. For some hours there was a rumor that Petr Vorobiev (Lada) could get to Moscow to be their new coach, but it was denied by Fastovsky. Some other rumors arose a tad later, like the old Tikhonov, Kasatonov, Nemchinov, and other candidates, more or less worthy of a place. Having a foreigner trainer might also be an option for the Red Army, who never had one though.

It will be also interesting what will be the fate of the players. Foreigners Jussi Markkanen and Jonathan Hedstrom already left the team. The goalie headed to Switzerland, the forward to Sweden. Many other players will surely follow them as many contracts are running out soon. One of them is Konstantin Korneev. His success was absolutely tied with Bykov as when he joined CSKA he was just a perspective player who didn’t achieve too much in his young pro career. Now he’s the captain of the most popular European team and a first line defenseman for the Russian sbornaya. Most likely the Montreal Canadiens will follow the situation closely, as they might want to secure the young blue liner in case he decides to abandon the Russian ship. The Habs drafted Korneev in the ninth round of the 2002 NHL Entry Draft. 

An interesting thing is also thinking about the players who were in Bykov’s shopping list. Traktor’s Evgeny Dadonov – 19 years old – was among them. Now who knows if the new trainer will try to sign the young player anyway? The Florida Panthers will offer him a contract?