HC Dinamo Minsk

Hockey Club Dinamo-Minsk (Russian: Дина́мо-Минск; Belarusian: Дынама-Мінск, Dynama-Minsk) is an ice hockey team based in Minsk, Belarus. They are members of the Tarasov Division of the Kontinental Hockey League.
Dinamo has qualified for the KHL playoffs (Gagarin Cup) four times: in the 2010–11, 2011–12, 2014–15 and 2016–17 KHL seasons. The team has not won a single round in the Gagarin Cup playoffs, losing in all four series.
==History==
The origins of the club begin in 1966, where the original Dinamo played 5 seasons in the Soviet Top Ice Hockey League, with its highest finish being 10th place in the 1989/90 season. Dinamo was renamed as Tivali Minsk in 1993 and four times became a champion of the Belarusian Championship in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2000. Tivali was disbanded in 2000. Dinamo was founded in 2003, taking the name of the historic club, and won champion title and Belarusian Cup twice. 
On March 26, 2008, the KHL confirmed the Belarusian club's inclusion in the Bobrov Division. Dinamo-Minsk started to play on the ice of Minsk Palace of Sports and was relocated to the newly built Minsk-Arena in December 2009. The first head coach of the Belarusian club was Paul Gardner, who was dismissed until the championship had begun. The next one became Jim Hughes, a protégé of previous Belarus national team head coach Curt Fraser. But after the first twelve games the team came down next to the last place and soon Jim Hughes was dismissed. New vacancy was taken by Russian specialist Vasili Spiridonov whose efforts were not enough to raise Dinamo-Minsk from the bottom of the tournament table. The club became the 22nd out of 24 teams. 
 
The next season team began under command of Glen Hanlon, who brought the Belarus national team to the sixth place at WC2006 in Riga. The team roster was fulfilled with world famous players Ville Peltonen and Ossi Väänänen, also one of best the Belarus goalkeepers Andrei Mezin was employed by HC Dinamo-Minsk. Season of 2009/2010 was alike to the previous. Team hadn't showed good result and Glen Hanlon was substituted by head coach of HK Gomel. Dinamo-Minsk finished at the 17th spot in the KHL, while missing the play-offs, but still managed to win Spengler Cup under the guidance of Alexander Andrievsky.
Season 2010/2011 became the best season in KHL history of Dinamo-Minsk. The new head coach of the team became Marek Sýkora. Sýkora is widely thought as one of the best coaches of Kontinental Hockey League. He brought Metallurg Magnitogorsk to the final games in 2005 and a rookie of the KHL Avtomobilist to KHL play-offs in 2010. Dinamo-Minsk under his command managed not only to get into the play-offs, but stayed in one step from the Western Conference semi-finals when Lokomotiv prevailed in the decisive game seven of the series. 
Also Dinamo-Minsk was named the most attended club in the KHL after the 2010-2011 season. 
The new season of Dinamo-Minsk was to have begun on September 8, 2011 versus Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. However, on September 7, 2011, a plane carrying the Lokomotiv team to the game in Minsk crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all of the team's roster. Four days later, a memorial ceremony took place at the Minsk-Arena, with all Minsk players paying tributes to each one of the victims.
In the 2016–17 season, the assistant coach of the Belarus national team Craig Woodcroft, became the head coach of Dinamo Minsk. From the very beginning to the end of the regular season, the "Bisons" were in the playoff zone and breaking a number of club records. They first collected 105 points in a regular season and took eighth place in the general standings of the KHL. But in the playoffs, Dinamo did not succeed. Again, as six years ago, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl became the rival at the first stage. The series ended in five games - 1-4. Also during the season, in December 2016, Dinamo for the second time took part in the Spengler Cup.
Woodcroft had a three-year contract, but elected to leave the team in spring to head the Swiss club Genève-Servette HC. Gordie Dwyer was appointed head coach for the 2017–18 season. The roster had to be formed taking into account the financial difficulties that arose at the end of the previous season, so the team was weakened. Leaders like Ben Scrivens, Kevin Lalande, Raman Hrabarenka, Matt Ellison, Rob Klinkhammer, Sergei Kostitsyn, Andrei Stas and Nikita Komarov left. Instead of these players came mainly young Belarusians and four hockey players who had not previously played in the KHL - Jhonas Enroth, Quinton Howden, Justin Fontaine and Jack Skille. Some of them showed great performance: Enroth joined the Sweden national team to participate in the Olympics in Pyeongchang and became the best player of the season in the opinion of the fans, and Howden took the second place in the list of the team's top scorers. But in general, the season for Dinamo was unsuccessful: the team finished in the 10th place in the conference and did not qualify for the playoffs.
==Arenas==
Dinamo called Minsk Sports Palace as their home until they moved to the new Minsk-Arena in 2010. Minsk-Arena has the biggest capacity in KHL and have already drawn numerous sellouts during KHL games.
==Honours==
===Champions===
 Belarus
*Belarusian Extraliga: (1): 2007
*Belarusian Cup (2): 2005, 2006
BSSR
*Belarusian SSR Championship: (2): 1968, 1970
Europe
*Spengler Cup (1): 2009
 Belarus
*Memorial Salei: (1): 2014
===Runners-up===
*Belarusian Extraliga (1): 2006
==Season-by-season KHL record==
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, Pts = Points
Season 	GP	W 	OTW	L 	OTL	Pts	GF 	GA 	Finish 	Top Scorer 	Playoffs
2008–09	56	12	3 	34	7 	49 	124	197	6th, Bobrov 	Yaroslav Chupris (25 points: 9 G, 16 A; 52 GP) 	Did not qualify
2009–10	56	17	6 	31	2 	65 	139	164	6th, Bobrov 	Geoff Platt (44 points: 26 G, 18 A; 56 GP) 	Did not qualify
2010–11	54	17	8 	22	7 	74 	150	155	4th, Tarasov	Konstantin Glazachev (35 points: 12 G, 23 A; 52 GP)	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 4-3 (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl)
2011–12	54	21	7 	20	6 	83 	158	148	4th, Tarasov	Teemu Laine (42 points: 20 G, 22 A; 54 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 4-0 (Dynamo Moscow)
2012–13	52	18	6 	23	5 	71 	125	148	5th, Tarasov	Tim Stapleton (40 points: 24 G, 16 A; 52 GP) 	Did not qualify
2013–14	54	13	4 	31	6 	53 	102	161	7th, Bobrov 	Geoff Platt (29 points: 15 G, 14 A; 40 GP) 	Did not qualify
2014–15	60	27	7 	21	5 	100	171	159	3rd, Bobrov 	Charles Linglet (58 points: 22 G, 36 A; 54 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 4-1 (Jokerit)
2015–16	60	20	7 	24	9 	83 	147	168	4th, Bobrov 	Matt Ellison (55 points: 26 G, 29 A; 54 GP) 	Did not qualify
2016–17	60	27	10 	19	4 	105	171	150	2nd, Bobrov 	Matt Ellison (49 points: 16 G, 33 A; 54 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 1-4 (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl)
2017–18	56	20	5 	28	3 	73 	112	129	4th, Bobrov 	Marc-Andre Gragnani (35 points: 6 G, 29 A; 55 GP) 	Did not qualify
2018–19	62	15	2 	37	8 	42 	119	180	5th, Tarasov	Teemu Pulkkinen (29 points: 15 G, 14 A; 50 GP) 	Did not qualify
2019–20	62	11	3 	37	11 	39 	135	232	6th, Tarasov	Ryan Spooner (37 points: 10 G, 27 A; 43 GP) 	Did not qualify
2020–21	60	17	15 	25	3 	67 	167	174	4th, Tarasov	Shane Prince (49 points: 25 G, 24 A; 52 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 1-4 (SKA Saint Petersburg)
2021–22	47	18	5 	16	8 	54 	138	144	5th, Tarasov	Taylor Beck (38 points: 8 G, 30 A; 42 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 0-4 (SKA Saint Petersburg)
2022–23	68	21	6 	27	14 	68 	175	201	5th, Tarasov	Ryan Spooner (47 points: 19 G, 28 A; 64 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 2-4 (SKA Saint Petersburg)
2023–24	68	26	6 	31	5 	69 	180	178	5th, Tarasov	Sam Anas (46 points: 21 G, 25 A; 60 GP) 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 2-4 (Dynamo Moscow)
==External links==
* Dinamo Minsk Official website
Category:Ice hockey teams in Belarus