Kazakhstan plans 2013-14 season

27 May 2013 | Davide Tuniz

National Cup in Kokshetau and Termitau will open a season with some news

The Executive Committee of the Kazakhstan Ice Hockey Federation held in Astana prepared the next season for domestic hockey. Here the main decisions:

The Federation accepted the resignation of national team GM Shumi Babaev as previously reported by Eurohockey
Aleksandr Linev was appointed as new U18 National Team coach, while Sergei Starygin, in this season Kazzinc Torpedo 2 and Kazakhstan U18 coach, will lead U20 team. All national teams will be supervised by new GM Aleksandr Koreshkov
As preparation for IHWC in Minsk, Men's National Team of Kazakhstan will take part from 6 to 8 February 2014 in the "Cup Evrovyzova" in Briançon, France. Also were planned preparatory matches against Austria, Slovenia and Italy.
Kazakhstan League: for 2013-14 season amendments to the rules and structure were approved.The most important of which are: a team can register a 30 players maximum roster, among them - no less than eleven players, including one goalkeeper, must be Kazakhs, in the game roster should be at least seven players of Kazakhstan, plus three young players not born before 1993. The second teams of Barys, Kazzinc-Torpedo and Sary-Arka will change their name to be a different one from mother team. The only team already announced new name is Barys-2, from next year called Nomad Astana
Kazakhstan Cup: Cup will be held from 20 to 28 August in two cities - Temirtau and Kokshetau. Bronze medal match and final will be played in Kokshetau. As usual teams are splitted in two group, the winner of each will play the final: Group A (Temirtau) includes Ertis Pavlodar, Arystan Temirtau ,Gornyak Rudny, Nomad Astana,Kazzinc-Torpedo 2
Group B (Kokshetau) alligns Beybarys Atyrau , Arlan Kokshetau, HK Almaty, HK Astana, Sary-Arka 2
Finally clubs rejected the request from Russian club Shakhtyor Prokopyevsk to join the Kazakhstan League. Most of the teams voted against, explaining the reluctance to make long trips to Prokopyevsk. Despite this vote, Kazakhstan Federation let the door open to Shakhtyor partecipation, if some conditions will be satisfied

"If we talk about the national team, we had two big tasks for the last season, but we reached the 50% of them.The main task was to win a ticket to Sochi, unfortunately, has not been happened. But we solved another problem, our return to the Elite Group at IHWC- said Kazakhstan Hockey Federation President Askar Mamin opening the Executive Committee meeting.- Our U18 and U20 were very well, a big disappointment come from women's teams."