"Will the KHL lose 'Barys'? Russia aims to address the crisis facing the Kazakh club."

Here’s what the media writes in their article...

The Astana team is losing to everyone and is heading towards a record low in league performance.

Just a few days ago, "Barys" suffered another loss without scoring, conceding five goals at home to "Lada," who had lost all their highest-paid players. At that moment, the defeat marked the 15th in the last 16 matches (the only exception was "Dynamo," and that was in Moscow), and in eight of those games, the Astana team didn’t score at all. Overall, "Barys" has recorded 12 scoreless games this season.

After that match, Galym Mambetaliyev continued to share the same old story: "The only one who plays without mistakes is the one who doesn't play hockey at all, the one sitting on the bench. Today we will analyze things to avoid such mistakes. But at this moment, the team is still in the process of formation." In principle, almost every press conference for "Barys" features an acknowledgment of the team's mistakes — and when asked whether the head coach is willing to admit his own mistakes, he responded, "Are you suggesting that I am to blame?"

And while the news feeds buzz with records from Ovechkin, "Barys" could set an entirely different record for the KHL. After 45 games, the team, which has been managed by four head coaches, has scored 58 goals — or 1.29 goals per game. If this pace continues until the end of the season, "Barys" will finish the regular season with 88 goals (rounded up), which would be a clear record low for the KHL. Moreover, this current regular season is the longest in KHL history, and many players have managed to break personal records because of it.

Only two teams in league history have scored fewer than 100 goals in a season — Metallurg Novokuznetsk in 2016/2017 (97 goals in 60 games, averaging 1.62) and Yugra in 2017/2018 (93 goals in 56 games, averaging 1.66). For both teams, that season was their last in the league — and neither squad had any notable scorers. "Kuznya" simply lacked a budget: the best players on that team were young talents in hidden loans — like Kirill Semyonov and Artem Mikheev. "Yugra" featured veterans coming from the fair and completely mysterious legionnaires like Vojtech Polak and Jeremy Morin.

A parallel with the clubs expelled from the KHL almost surfaced yesterday. Information emerged that the youth teams of the "Barys" system are withdrawing from youth competitions in Russia — and this was not just a rumor, as a letter from the club was also provided. Some sources stated yesterday that the adult team would follow suit, but last night "Match TV" denied this information. However, rumors about the potential end of the "Barys" project had circulated even before this.

The problems of "Barys" are just the tip of the iceberg in local hockey. A lot has already been written about them: the actual collapse of the Ust-Kamenogorsk hockey school; the loss of clubs in the VHL, where players still gained better experience than in the local league; and populist decisions regarding the cancellation of Kazakh passports for naturalized players. Meanwhile, almost all Russian passport holders reached the KHL level precisely in Kazakhstan: Pavel Akolzin, who started scoring at SKA, spent five years at "Beybaris" before making a full KHL debut at 27. Alexey Maklyukov and Dmitry Shevchenko are players from Voskresensk, whom "Barys" picked up after "Dynamo" lost their legal entity in 2017.

It seems that the relative successes of the 2023 and 2024 World Championships, where Kazakhstan played without naturalized players but managed to defeat Norway, France, and direct competitors for survival, have somewhat clouded the minds of local leaders. However, the ban on Russia and Belarus primarily impacted the competitive level at the bottom of the standings, which has been diluted by the perennial "elevators" from Division 1A. The Mambetaliyev team defeated Slovenia and Poland, albeit not without issues, but would these teams have played in the elite with a full roster of participants?

Recently, there have also been "Game of Thrones" dynamics at the top of local hockey: Oleg Boliakin was removed from the club, but he remains the boss of the national team. As a result, a team composed 80% of players from the OCHRK went to the Channel One Cup — they lost all matches with the same score of 1:3. Moreover, if the rumors are to be believed, a similar team composition could attend the World Championship in Herning — and without a standing Nikita Boyarkin (or Andrey Shutov), it's easy to imagine they could lose to Hungary.

One can again compare the situation in Kazakhstan with that of Belarus. We can recall how Alexander Lukashenko personally mentioned that he himself is a hockey player and that it’s better to have a few strong legionnaires rather than many — and "Dynamo" struggled for several years under the "6+1" formula at the bottom of the table. However, Belarus has now built an excellent player development system, and Dynamo’s legionnaires organically complement young talents — even considering that many Belarusians play in Russian league clubs.

It is noteworthy that even with the failure of foreign players at "Barys," they scored almost half of the team's goals — 26 out of 56. Almost half of these 26 (12) were scored by Anton Burdasov, who remembered around the trade deadline that he has a great shot. What would happen if the dreams of a fully local roster came true? "It is impossible to compete with only players from the Kazakhstan championship and win against anyone. It is essential to have a powerful first line in the club. Foreigners, particularly from Canada and America, like Josh Leivo, who will score in every game and lead the team," recently stated former president of Ust-Kamenogorsk's "Torpedo," Yuri Petukhov.

However, the trend towards "de-legionization" is not unique to "Barys." The local parliament recently passed a law prohibiting the funding of contracts for foreign (including Russian) athletes from state sources — only from private funds. The basketball team "Astana" has undergone similar processes to "Barys": they terminated almost all legionnaires and the foreign coach. The results exceeded all expectations: "Astana" lost all 23 matches with an average margin of "-27."

And now we return to the departure of "Barys" teams from Russian leagues, supposedly "due to lack of funding." However, it turns out that funding exists to terminate numerous foreign players during the season with compensation payments — and there was clearly demand for Michael McLeod in the KHL; a trade option could have been found. There is funding to keep Johan Mattsson as the third goalie, who hasn’t played a minute since October 5. Nikita Kamalov was effectively released to "Metallurg" for free, while 30 million rubles are being paid for Evgeny Kulik. However, there is no funding for youth teams — and this is amidst claims that "legionnaires take away jobs."

Of course, the foreign player structure that delivered results for "Barys" in its best years was quite unreliable. However, there is no foundation behind it — and the presence of strong foreign leaders in a KHL club will not hinder the creation of this foundation. We do not want a club from a city of one and a half million with a new arena to turn into an analogue of "Kuznya" from seven years ago or to leave the league altogether, wasting its potential.