Vityaz was weird at the start of the championship, there was a time when he wasn’t in the playoff top eight at all. However, by the end of the year, the “heroes” had clearly grown in size. In the last 14 games, they have had 11 wins. Today the team enters the 6th round and has a handicap of 8 points against 9. However, it is too early to relax, to play another 11 rounds until the end of the regular season. So that all these efforts are not in vain, it is necessary to finish the main draw of the tournament with maximum concentration, as Vityaz did in the last three matches, defeating Metallurg in the last of them on penalties. And before that, twice in a row… Sochi.

And Sochi in the last round quite unexpectedly ended a five-match losing streak with a victory over Spartak. Although the Muscovites are, in fact, now themselves at the level of the last team in the western conference, which are the “leopards”, the level of play is not much different. The win in the final match was scarcely to be said for the Southerners, only their seventh in 56 championship bouts and only their fifth in regular time.