Vityaz Chekhov Vityaz Chekhov ( in Russian : Витязь Чехов , " Chekhov Warriors " , " Vityaz " being an ancient Rus word meaning " valiant warrior " ) ( founded in 1998 in Podolsk , Russia ) is a professional ice hockey team of the Kontinental Hockey League . They play their home games at the Podolsk Ice Palace . History . The club was founded in 1998 as Vityaz Podolsk . In 2000 , the team moved to the neighboring city of Chekhov ; however , the team kept playing under the name Vityaz Podolsk until 2004 , where the renaming was finally done . The team initially played its home games at the Ice Palace Vityaz in Podolsk , the same arena HK MVD Balashikha used until 2006 . Such a thing was allowed by virtue of the opening in 2004 of a new arena in Chekhov , the Ice Hockey Center 2004 , that Vityaz began using . Initially , this arena had a capacity of 1 , 370 ; it was expanded in 2007 - 08 to 3 , 300 . Vityaz played at the top level of Russian hockey for the 2000 - 01 RSL season ; it got relegated to Vysshaya Liga at the end of the season . In 2005 , Vityaz won the Vysshaya Liga championship and earned a promotion back to the elite level . Rumors of a move back to Podolsk arose in the wake of the inaugural KHL season as even with the expansion of 2007 - 08 , Chekhov ' s capacity is still below the norm established by the KHL . The team indeed restarted playing their home games in Podolsk , but remained attached to Chekhov . Kontinental Hockey League . Chekhov ' s debuts in the KHL were pretty bad . Vityaz registered a mere 6 wins in regulation , plus five in overtime ; in counterpart for those 11 wins , the team lost 45 times ( of which , 12 games were in overtime ) . The meager 40 points collected meant that the team finished at a dismal 23rd place out of 24 , a single point ahead of the equally bad Khimik Voskresensk . Head coach Sergei Gomolyako made the mistake in October to dress one more foreign player than allowed by the rules , resulting in a match lost by forfeit . Gomolyako claimed he ignored there was such a rule , and the following week , he was fired , to be replaced by former NHL player and Vityaz head coach Mike Krushelnyski . Vityaz ' fans enjoyed the return of Krushelnyski , who was had brought the team to the playoffs in 2006 - 07 . But Chekhov ' s goon - full roster , which general manager Alexei Zhamnov wishes to shape after the 1990s Chicago Blackhawks for whom he played , just couldn ' t bring good enough performances to repeat the feat . They however led the league in penalty minutes , some 500 minutes ahead of the second most penalized club , with players such as Nathan Perrott ( 137 minutes in 9 matches and not a single point ) , Darcy Verot ( more disciplined and productive than in his first season with Vityaz , even though it still only meant 5 points and 168 minutes ) and Chris Simon ( league leader at 263 minutes , and club ' s second best scorer behind Gleb Klimenko at 27 points ) . The team traded away three of its six top scorers ( Klimenko , Pavel Boychenko and Igor Radulov ) and without the arrival of Bryan Berard ( who scored 18 points in 25 games and vastly improved Chekhov ' s powerplay ) , the team might have done even worse . But Chekhov ' s season was particularly darkened by the tragic death of Alexei Cherepanov , a death that occurred on its home ice and that might have been avoided had Chekhov ' s arena been equipped with a working defibrillator and had not the ambulance that should remain available until the end of the match not departed well before the end , resulting in much longer delays between the accident and the moment where Cherepanov arrived at the nearest hospital . 2009 - 10 felt like déja - vu for Chekhov . After almost being thrown out of the league due to its finances in August ( it needed to find 300 million of rubles , which it did ) , the Knights started the season with two wins and temporarily led the league . Things didn ' t last however as the team finished 23rd out of 24 teams with only 13 regular - tme wins ( plus 3 in overtime and 2 in the shootouts ; it nevertheless is an improvement from the previous year ) , 54 points and , once again , a colossal amount of penalty minutes : 1522 , ahead and by far every other team in the league . Vadim Berdnikov , Gleb Klimenko ( who came back from Kazan ) and Chris Simon led the offence with respectively 33 , 27 and 25 points . Darcy Verot , on the other hand , led the team in penalty minutes with 376 in 34 matches . Once again , an incident between Vityaz and Avangard marked the season . On January 9 2010 , the game between Vityaz and Avangard was stopped after 3 minutes and 39 seconds when a bench - clearing and penalty - box - clearing brawl broke out . Darcy Verot had instigated the brawl after three minutes of play when he shot the puck at an Avangard player . A mass brawl quickly followed , which the referees could deal with . However , as soon as the game was resumed , fighting resumed as well and both benches cleared to join the fight . The game was quickly getting out of hands and the officials decided it was better to cancel the whole game . Little else could be done , as a whopping total of 707 penalty minutes had been incurred - a new world record - and a total of 33 players on both teams have been ejected from the game , as well as both head coaches . Only four players avoided being ejected . The KHL imposed a total of 5 . 7 million rubles ( about US $ 191 , 000 ) fines , including 150 , 000 rubles fines to Vityaz ' s Darcy Verot and Brandon Sugden and Avangard ' s Alexander Svitov and Dmitry Vlasenkov . Additionally , Verot , Sugden , Vlasenkov and four other Vityaz players received one - game suspensions . . Additionally , this game became the first in the league history where both teams lost the game , as the league declared it would be a 5 - 0 loss for both Avangard and Vityaz . No team earned points for this match . It was the first time Avangard visited Chekhov since Cherepanov ' s death .