Horse Racing stats man, Andy has contributed to OLBG for 18 years – An Ipswich fan and F1 fanatic, he also contributes EFL football and Motor Sport opinion.
The new season of the KHL gets underway in September 2024 and Metallurg Magnitogorsk will be looking to defend their Gagarin Cup after whitewashing Lokomotiv Yaroslavl 4-0 in last season’s final.
That was title number six for Lokomotiv Yaroslavl and their first title since 2016 and they ended CSKA Moscow’s quest for a third consecutive title who went out in the first round of the playoffs.
They will head into the 2023-24 season looking to back up their championship win, a feat they have yet to achieve in the past when winning previous championships.
Throughout the season be sure to head over to the Kontinental Hockey League Predictions from our expert ice hockey tipsters to see which teams they are backing to be successful.
When it comes to comparing six of the most popular hockey leagues, then it is the KHL which comes out top as the most reliable for winning favourites. The league has seen 62.82% of favourites over the past five season go on to success.
The most reliable team when it comes to favourites in the KHL over the past five seasons is SKA St. Petersburg. They have a win rate of 70.93% when priced up by the bookmakers as favourites with 222 wins from a total of 313 games.
At the other end of the scale is Vladivostok with a win rate of 51.28%. That has come from 39 games producing 20 wins, they are maybe the team in this league to avoid when they are priced up as favourites.
*Favourite statistics only include regular-season games
The Continental Cup is awarded to the regular-season winners, the team who amasses the most points before the playoffs, since the founding of the league, there has been a total of seven different winners of the trophy.
Do the Continental Cup winners do well in the playoffs? There is a simple answer to that and it’s not really! You would expect following a very good regular season that the winners would go on to perform well in the postseason, however, in the twelve seasons (2019-20 had no postseason) only one Continental Cup winner has also gone on to win the Gagarin Cup, that was CSKA Moscow in the 2018-19 season.
Furthermore, only a total of three of the winners made the Gagarin Cup finals, the other two have also been CSKA Moscow who lost in the final in both 2016 & 2021. The Continental Cup has been awarded to a team from the Western Conference every year since 2013.
The winner of the KHL season after the playoffs receives the Gagarin Cup, named after the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, what does he have to do with hockey? Nothing, but the last game of the season is usually played around the anniversary (12th April) of his flight.
The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) was founded in 2008, the 2019-20 season was cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic which means we have had a total of fifteen winners of the Gagarin Cup and we are split at seven wins from the eastern conference teams and seven wins for the western conference teams, the inaugural season which was won by AK Bars Kazan did not have a conference split.
AK Bars Kazan has made the final five times whilst CSKA Moscow have made the final on six occasions and they are well matched with Kazan & CSKA both winning three titles but it is CSKA who have had better recent success winning two of the last three and beating Kazan in 2023 final. Metallurg Magnitogorsk’s win in 2024 added to their wins in both 2014 & 2016 making them also three-time winners.
Both Dynamo Moscow (2012 & 2013) and SKA Saint Petersburg (2015 & 2017) have 100% records when making the finals having both won the two finals they have appeared in.
Who will be adding to their winning record this season? We have a lot of expert tipsters for ice hockey, try our Best Ice Hockey Tipsters page which will display only hockey tipsters who have shown a profit over the past year.
The Bobrov Division is named after the great Vsevolod Bobrov, the former Soviet Union gold medalist and former CSKA Moscow player.
Named after the ‘Father of Russian Hockey’, the hockey hall of fame legend Anatoli Tarasov, the man who put the Soviet Union on the hockey map.
The Kharlamov division is another division that is named after an Olympic gold medalist for the Soviet Union and former CKSA player, Valeri Kharlamov who is also inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Arkady Ivanovich Chernyshev whom this division is named in honour of was remembered as more influential in the hockey world after he retired from playing, he was the coach of the national team (Soviet Union) and also Dynamo Moscow and was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame.
Andy Powell manages this Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) Preview & Betting Guide and other hockey content in this section of the site as well as the Ice Hockey Tipsters in the OLBG tipster competition in his role in the OLBG Expert Team. Andy meticulously updates the date and results for these pieces and is an erstwhile Penguins fan in the NHL. He provides Ice Hockey betting advice in our bookmaker reviews as well as providing a huge contribution to the Best Ice Hockey Betting Sites Guide.
Andy Powell
Content Editor
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