HC Vityaz

Chekhov's debuts in the KHL were pretty bad. Vityaz registered a mere 6 wins in regulation, plus 5 in overtime; in counterpart for those 11 wins, the team lost 45 times (of which, 12 games were in overtime). The meager 40 points collected meant that the team finished at a dismal 23rd place out of 24, a single point ahead of the equally bad Khimik Voskresensk. Head coach Sergei Gomolyako made the mistake in October to dress one more foreign player than allowed by the rules, resulting in a match lost by forfeit. Gomolyako claimed he ignored there was such a rule, and the following week, he was fired, to be replaced by former NHL player and Vityaz head coach Mike Krushelnyski. Vityaz' fans enjoyed the return of Krushelnyski, who was had brought the team to the playoffs in 2006–07. But Chekhov's goon-full roster, which general manager Alexei Zhamnov wishes to shape after the 1990s Chicago Blackhawks for whom he played, just couldn't bring good enough performances to repeat the feat. They however led the league in penalty minutes, some 500 minutes ahead of the second most penalized club, with players such as Nathan Perrott (137 minutes in 9 matches and not a single point), Darcy Verot (more disciplined and productive than in his first season with Vityaz, even though it still only meant 5 points and 168 minutes) and Chris Simon (league leader at 263 minutes, and club's second best scorer behind Gleb Klimenko at 27 points). The team traded away three of its six top scorers (Klimenko, Pavel Boychenko and Igor Radulov) and without the arrival of Bryan Berard (who scored 18 points in 25 games and vastly improved Chekhov's powerplay), the team might have done even worse.

But Chekhov's season was particularly darkened by the death of Alexei Cherepanov in October 2008, a death occurred on its home ice and that might have been avoided had Chekhov's arena been equipped with a working defibrillator and had not the ambulance that should remain available until the end of the match not departed well before the end, resulting in much longer delays between the accident and the moment where Cherepanov arrived at the nearest hospital.[4] [5]

2009–10 felt like déja-vu for Chekhov. After almost being thrown out of the league due to its finances in August (it needed to find 300 million of rubles, which it did), the Knights started the season with two wins and temporarily led the league. Things didn't last however as the team finished 23rd out of 24 teams with only 13 regular-season wins (plus 3 in overtime and 2 in the shootouts—an improvement from the previous year), 54 points and, once again, a colossal amount of penalty minutes: 1522, ahead and by far every other team in the league. Vadim Berdnikov, Gleb Klimenko (who came back from Kazan) and Chris Simon led the offence with respectively 33, 27 and 25 points. Darcy Verot, on the other hand, led the team in penalty minutes with 376 in 34 matches.

Once again, an incident between Vityaz and Avangard marked the season. On January 9, 2010, the game between Vityaz and Avangard was stopped after 3 minutes and 39 seconds when a bench-clearing and penalty-box-clearing brawl broke out. Darcy Verot had instigated the brawl after three minutes of play when he shot the puck at an Avangard player. A mass brawl quickly followed, which the referees could deal with. However, as soon as the game was resumed, fighting resumed as well and both benches cleared to join the fight.[6] The game was quickly getting out of hand and the officials decided it was better to cancel the whole game. Little else could be done, as a whopping total of 707 penalty minutes had been incurred – a new world record – and a total of 33 players on both teams have been ejected from the game, as well as both head coaches. Only four players avoided being ejected. The KHL imposed a total of 5.7 million rubles (about US $191,000) fines, including 150,000 rubles fines to Vityaz's Darcy Verot and Brandon Sugden and Avangard's Alexander Svitov and Dmitry Vlasenkov.[7] Additionally, Verot, Sugden, Vlasenkov and four other Vityaz players received one-game suspensions. Additionally, this game became the first in the league history where both teams lost the game, as the league declared it would be a 5–0 loss for both Avangard and Vityaz. No team earned points for this match. It was the first time Avangard visited Chekhov since Cherepanov's death.

Updated 6 March 2020.[8][9]

#	Nat	Player	Pos	S/G	Age	Acquired	Birthplace
44		Evgeny Artyukhin	LW	L	37	2019	Moscow, Russian SFSR
38		Alexei Byvaltsev	C	L	26	2019	Magnitogorsk, Russia
53		Pavel Chernov	C	R	30	2018	Novopolotsk, Belarusian SSR
–		Kaspars Daugavins	LW	L	32	2020	Riga, Latvian SSR
75		Nikita Goncharov	F	R	21	2018	Orel, Russia
11		Igor Golovkov	D	L	30	2011	Moscow, Russian SFSR
71		Svyatoslav Grebenshchikov	RW	L	26	2019	Saint Petersburg, Russia
61		Quinton Howden	C	L	28	2019	Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
15		Jakub Jerabek	D	L	29	2019	Plzeň, Czechoslovakia
25		Pekka Jormakka	RW	R	29	2019	Jyväskylän mlk, Finland
26		Evgeny Katichev	D	L	33	2016	Chelyabinsk, Russian SFSR
76		Pyotr Kochetkov	G	L	21	2019	Penza, Russia
82		Alexander Kulagin	RW	L	26	2017	Moscow, Russia
73		Danila Kvartalnov	LW	L	22	2019	Voskresensk, Russia
47		Ville Lajunen	D	R	32	2019	Helsinki, Finland
68		Ivan Larichev	LW	L	24	2019	Nizhny Tagil, Russia
91		Alexei Makeyev	LW	L	28	2013	Novouralsk, Russian SFSR
–		Fedor Malykhin	F	L	30	2020	Sverdlovsk, Russian SFSR
93		Danila Moiseyev	LW	L	21	2017	Moscow, Russia
9		Joonas Nättinen	C	R	29	2019	Jämsä, Finland
72		Denis Orlovich-Grudkov	RW	L	24	2019	Saint Petersburg, Russia
81		Yuri Pautov	D	L	25	2017	Yaroslavl, Russia
13		Ivan Petrakov	C	L	26	2017	Kondopoga, Russia
40		Igor Saprykin	G	L	28	2012	Moscow, Russia
28		Alexander Semin (C)	RW	R	36	2018	Krasnoyarsk, Russian SFSR
10		Alexander Shevchenko	RW	R	27	2018	Belgorod, Russia
8		Ilya Shinkevich	D	L	30	2018	Minsk, Belarusian SSR
65		Pavel Vorobey	D	R	22	2019	Minsk, Belarus
59		Yegor Voronkov	D	R	23	2015	Podolsk, Russia
51		Pavel Varfolomeyev	LW	R	25	2019	Magnitogorsk, Russia
3		Mikhail Yepishin	D	R	23	2015	Stolbovaya, Russia
7		Alexander Yevseyenkov (A)	D	L	34	2018	Malakhovka, Russian SFSR
33		Ilya Yezhov	G	L	33	2019	Krasnodar, Russian SFSR

Players

• Mikhail Anisin, RW, 2011–12, 2012
• Alexander Korolyuk, RW, 2004–05, 2005–08, 2012–2014, 2013
• Chris Simon, LW, 2008–11, 2010, 2011
• Ivan Lisutin, G, 2012–15, 2014
• Maxim Afinogenov, RW, 2013–18, 2014

These are the top-ten point-scorers in franchise history in the KHL. Note: Pos = Position; GP = Games Played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game; bold = current Vityaz player [10]

Player	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	+/-	PPG	SHG	GWG
Alexei Makeyev	381	86	101	187	134	−4	17	5	16
Maxim Afinogenov	268	80	84	164	325	−24	19	3	9
Roman Horak	224	59	56	115	106	−22	21	5	4
Miro Aaltonen	154	47	63	110	66	7	20	1	10
Vadim Berdnikov	163	31	61	92	177	−22	7	3	3
Mario Kempe	166	39	44	83	144	−28	13	2	7
Chris Simon	113	37	43	80	503	−17	19	0	9
Alexander Semin	104	37	42	79	112	3	13	0	9
Artemi Panarin	143	29	46	75	97	−15	10	0	2
Alexander Nikulin	177	26	48	74	18	−17	8	0	2

Vysshaya Liga (1): 2005

Wingas Cup (1): 2017

Lehner Cup (1): 2018