Exactly 35 years ago, the SKA Leningrad team won a bronze medal at the USSR Ice Hockey Championship. It was a sensation for the time, not without reason, in St. Petersburg, bronze was immediately called gold. The Leningrad club could not buy the best players from all over the country, as the wealthy SKA does now. The foundation of this team was made by local students. Coach Valery Shilov did a good job. Forward Nikolai Drozdetsky, in time, returned to the banks of the Neva.

In the eighties, the top positions of the podium in our hockey were almost always occupied by CSKA. He fought Spartak and Dynamo, if you can call it a fight, because the best players gathered under the banner of the army club to play for the national team. Occasionally, the “provinces” moved up to third place – Chelyabinsk Tractor, Voskresensky Khimik, Kyiv Sokol.

SKA was the only bronze medalist to be won in 1971. It was a great success. Then the club was in the shadows for a long time, it was called the younger brother of CSKA. Not only good players but also coaches were “sold” there. So, in the early eighties, SKA was led by legendary hockey players, troika partners in CSKA and the USSR national team, friends Boris Mikhailov and Vladimir Petrov. This was the beginning of the coaching career of Boris Mikhailov, Petrov helped him as a player-coach. This duet is believed to have laid the foundation for the 1987 SKA bronze.

– On the one hand, this is true, – says the goalkeeper of this team, Sergey Cherkas, who played 39 games in the bronze season (a solid figure for those times). – On the other hand, Valery Shilov, who joined SKA in 1984, brought many innovations. He and his assistants did a good job of selection. Filmed Alexander Mikhailov, Yura Gaylik, Misha Kravets came from Izhorets. We didn’t have supermasters, no. But even the composition was good. He could have decided the fate of every five games played.

At that time, the Tarasov school was considered the standard in hockey. Viktor Tikhonov followed him in CSKA. Boris Mikhailov was the same coach: training, hardening, “physics”, work with an emphasis on discipline. Shilov remembers SKA players, saved the team. He suggested new approaches in the training process and most importantly in the relationship between coach and players. Before that, he worked in Denmark, making the Redovre club champions. That also had an effect.

– Shilov was an intellectual coach, an intellectual, – says Cherkas. – He worked with the actors individually. He can talk, help, support. This was unusual for the time. I remember we came from Romania from the Armed Forces championship. On the same day, we played a game with Gorky’s Torpedo. Everyone had to be taken from the airport to the base. The guys approached the coach and said: Valery Vasilyevich, let me go home, I am always on the road, at least we will see our families. They say we can play too, we won’t let you down. He left Shilov. It was something unusual for the time. The coach took risks for the players, deviated from the rules. We won 2:1. And Torpedo was a strong team back then: the Skvortsov-Kovin-Varnakov trio had value. The actors gratefully responded to Shilov.

SKA started that season insignificantly. Kyiv lost to Sokol 1:9. I lost to Khimik 3:6… But then the team got together and started climbing the tournament ladder. Shilov correctly arranged the connections: Lavrov-Odintsov-Kravets, Andreev-Panin-Maslov, Tsvetkov-Vlasov-Teplyakov … Each of them had their own face. The real “fintar” was Panin, who ended his career in CSKA. The warrior spirit of Vyacheslav Lavrov. Leadership qualities of Nikolai Maslov, captain. The team was at a good age – 25-27, with many players in prime condition. We felt we could make a mark in hockey.

“Everything went well then: head, heart, soul,” recalls Mikhail Kravets, one of the most important SKA forwards of this team. – The so-called “chemistry” appeared. As Iosif Vissarionovich said, cadres decide everything. SKA players were good, top level. We didn’t just want to win medals. Someone wanted to promote himself, get into the USSR national team, play in the international arena.

It cannot be said that SKA adheres to a style. Then Kravets states that there is no red line, everyone is playing offensive hockey. Did Moscow “Dynamo” use scheme 1-4? The rest are mostly 2-1-2. Only SKA players went out on the ice with a desire, understood what they wanted from each other. Many have discovered new strengths, as with good teams.

– About me, for example, many say that I just threw myself under the disc. But I actually scored 16 goals that season. And he took part in a power struggle and fought, and under the puck … He tried to do everything to be useful, – now Mikhail, a well-known coach in the KHL, grins.

An invaluable contribution to the bronze medal was made by Nikolai Drozdetsky, who returned to SKA from CSKA in the middle of the season. He himself asked the coach Viktor Tikhonov to let him go. He decided to benefit the domestic team. By that time, Drozd had already won the Olympic Games, won the world championship twice, received the Canadian Cup as part of the USSR national team. He came to the city on the Neva as a legend. At the end of the season, he scored 13 goals in 14 games. And often decisive. Even though I played in the fourth ring, the coaches did it for balance.

In the match of the army team, which ended ahead of schedule with the bronze medals of the USSR championship – with “Khimik” – SKA lost 2:4. Drozdetsky designed a pair. And he brought the desired draw to the team. “Khimik” moved up to fifth place, and “Wings of the Soviets” to fourth place. CSKA won and the “little brother” was 25 points behind.

SKA’s game that season was highly appreciated by the fans. The team played its home matches at SCC Sports Palace, then at Yubileiny. Citizens lining up for tickets at night set fire to the arena to be the first person to arrive at the box office on time. Unforgettable duels took place. A victory over CSKA was worth it with a 6:4 score on Yubileiny ice. What happened next was like a miracle. In the same season, the SKA fan movement was born.

“We went to other cities for the team, we were at the match with Khimik in Voskresensk when SKA won the bronze medal,” says Dmitry Zhvania, known as Ara, one of the club’s famous fans. – Ordinary workers from the local chemical establishment gopnik were supporting Khimik. And the city itself is ridiculous. During the match, cigarettes were smoked in the stands. And no one commented on them. For some reason I remember.

When SKA played 4:4, the locals were very angry. We were led by the head of the SKA through a secret path from the stands of the Sports Palace. In the area in front of the arena where the buses parked, there were several dozen Alchemist fans. I just got back from the army and I had 15-16 year old guys with me. We would just be beaten.

I asked the SKA captain Kolya Maslov for help. “Don’t be afraid, everything will be fine,” he said. The SKA players, who left the Sports Palace, surrounded us, took sticks in their hands, and under their protection, we walked in order to the hotel where the team was staying. It is 300 meters from the stadium. The bus was already waiting there. We had fifteen fans. Together with the actors, they took the bus to Moscow. The driver said, “It will be an overload, I will not take it.” And Kolya Drozdetsky told him: “Everyone carries it, and you will be lucky. This is an officer of the Soviet army, you are commanding.

“In general, that’s how we got to Moscow,” continues Ara. — Hockey players congratulated along the way. They knew the “hits” of all our fans: “The great goalkeeper Seryozha Cherkas plays at the gate and makes us happy”, “And the enemy will never bow his head! My northern capital, my hometown Leningrad SKA!”, “The people and the army are one, army men, you are invincible!” Also from Moscow to St. We were put on the train to St. Petersburg. That’s how they did it then: We took the players’ trunks and got into the car like hockey players and hid from the conductors on the luggage rack in the compartment.

The success of SKA at that time can be compared with the success of Zenit, which won the USSR championship in 1984. In the football team, “dictator” Yuri Morozov was replaced by “democrat” Pavel Sadyrin. Zenit also played a good game. It collapsed only after the conquest of gold. You cannot say the same for SKA. But it remained a bronze division. In the future – until the tenth year of the XXI century – the army club did not gain anything.

— When we won the bronze medal in 1987, the authorities had many promises to provide apartments, solve financial problems, says Sergey Cherkas. Of course nothing was done. For bronze, players will receive a St. Both English and French books were given about the sights of St. Petersburg. It can be seen from the series “For foreigners”. The sports committee awarded a prize of 126 rubles. The SKA player received a salary of 250 rubles, an officer’s rate of 110 rubles and more, depending on the rank, and for the title of “Master of Sports” they paid an extra 10 rubles. It “ran” for somewhere up to 400 rubles a month.

Then Shilov recalls Cherkas, he was about to leave. Drozdetsky moved to Sweden, Panin – to Germany. The team entered a period of change. Gennady Tsygankov, a well-known player of CSKA and the USSR national team, was called up as a coach. They began to rejuvenate the composition. Then perestroika was in the garden – everything somehow shook, staggered. Like every team, that team has come of age.

Most of this SKA has passed away. Vyacheslav Lavrov was hit by a truck on the highway. Nikolai Drozdetsky died in Kolpino in his mother’s apartment – the ambulance did not have time to reach him and for some reason did not inject insulin that evening (he was diabetic). In addition, the ambulance did not have time to visit the defender Svyatoslav Khalizov, who was not feeling well in the hut. Another defender, Igor Evdokimov, fell while walking on the road. Nikolai Maslov died at a training session for veterans: a blood clot broke off. Dmitry Kukushkin, Sergey Lapshin could not find themselves after sports …

I remember the SKA team that won the bronze medal in 1987. Not the richest, close-knit, fighting, interesting and brightly showing hockey. Fall in love with the fans.