Wayne Fleming Flies to Russia

Fleming flies east
CALGARY – Calgary Flames assistant coach Wayne Fleming will be the new head coach of Russian team Avangard Omsk. The NHL club accepted the resignation of the Canadian. “We have great respect for the work Wayne did with us and appreciate his contributions,” said Flames GM Darryl Sutter. “We understand that the opportunity to be the head coach of a significant team such as this represents the very best opportunity for him and his career at this time.” Fleming is no complete stranger in the KHL. In June, he travelled to Minsk where he was supposed to sign with Dynamo Minsk and the Belarusian federation but finally, he went back to the Flames. The 58-year-old comes to Siberia to take over a team in crisis. The club, owned by oil billionaire Roman Abramovich, who’s also famous for calling the Londoner football team Chelsea his own, spent millions to have a team fighting for the championship and signing high-calibre players starring Jaromir Jagr. The Czech superstar had four points (2+2) which makes him the second-best scorer in the team after Dmitri Pestunov. Far less than the most successful scorers of the league. Ak Bars Kazan’s Danis Zaripov is leading with 11 points (5+6) after six games. Avangard began with a road trip fiasco, losing to Ak Bars Kazan (4-2) and Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk (3-1) before beating Lada Togliatti, 2-1. The first home game with an upsetting 6-0 sweep against reigning European club champion Metallurg Magnitogorsk calmed down the nerves for some hours but the home defeats to Salavat Yulayev Ufa (5-1) and Traktor Chelyabinsk (6-3) were definitely too much. Of 24 teams, Avangard is ranked 21st in the league with two wins in six games and the club recently announced to find a new coach after what they call a poor performance. After six games, head coach Sergei Gersonsky decided to make way for a new coach and the club management seemed to have looked for a North American coach as also Bob Hartley and Dave King were rumoured to be candidates in the Russian media. Fleming was associate coach for Team Canada at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, and the 2002 and 2006 Olympic Games, and head coach in several other events including the 2001 and 2002 IIHF World Championship. It is not known yet when Fleming will debut but at least today against Lada Togliatti, Igor Nikitin will be behind the bench before the avant-garde coach from Canada will arrive. On Sunday, the team has another road trip with games in Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk and twice in Khabarovsk. Notebook:   With just one loss, reigning champion Salavat Yulayev Ufa and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl are the most successful clubs in the young league. Having already played eight games and won 16 points, the first place currently goes to Metallurg Novokuznetsk while namesake Metallurg Magnitogorsk is ranked tenth. All expansion clubs can be found at the bottom of the standings except Dinamo Riga. The team which looks like kind of the Latvian national team plus some imports including their Slovakian top scorer Marcel Hossa (7+3=10 points) is on sixth place. The KHL is going to Finland – at least for two games. Because the Arena Riga can’t serve with too much ice time for the club founded in spring, it was announced that Dinamo Riga’s home game against Ak Bars on October 26th will be played in Espoo. Also the game against Lada Togliatti on the following day will be played in the city 20 kilometres away from Helsinki. Wade Dubielewicz backup Stanislav Galimov of Ak Bars is leading the goalie stats with a 96.4 save percentage after his two games. Despite plenty of foreign goalkeepers, also the best number-one goalie right now is domestic with Russian national team netminder Alexander Yeremenko (94.8) of Salavat Yulayev Ufa. He’s followed by Canadian Tyler Moss (94.2), who plays for the far-east team Amur Khabarovsk.   MARTIN MERK

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