Avangard Omsk

Hockey Club Avangard (, Vanguard), also known as Avangard Omsk Region, are a Russian professional ice hockey team from Siberia, based in the city of Omsk. They are members of the Chernyshev Division of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
==Franchise history==
The first amateur ice hockey teams in Omsk began to appear in 1950, formed by local bandy players. One of them was a hockey section of the Omsk Spartak sports society. Spartak Omsk was chosen to be the first Omsk hockey team in the 1950–51 RSFSR championship. In the 1955–56 season, the team had a chance to represent the city in the Soviet Championship, joining its then-second level Class B league and recruiting the best hockey players from Omsk. Four seasons later, the team finally won promotion to the top division.
Its first game in the major Soviet championship Spartak played on November 29, 1959, against Spartak (later Avtomobilist) Sverdlovsk. The first goal for Avangard was scored by Viktor Shevelev. In 1962, the team was assigned with a trade union of the Omsk airport and renamed as Aeroflot Omsk. Playing under its new name, the Omsk team reached the 13th place overall, its highest success during the original four-season run in the top level of Soviet hockey. However, it was still not enough to secure their position in the Class A after the subsequent reform of the championship—starting with the 1963–64 season, Aeroflot joined a newly established A2 league. 
Further realignment in 1966 drove Aeroflot out to the third level competition (the third group of the Class A). The next season, 1967–68, the team was renamed once again as Kauchuk (Rubber) reflecting the change of the team's assignment to the Sibirsky Kauchuk combine. Shortly after, for the 1969–70 season, the team was taken over by Yevgeny Babich, who finished his coaching career in Omsk.
In order to improve the performance of Omsk in the Soviet championship, Kauchuk, in 1972, was merged with rival Lokomotiv Omsk into a single team called Khimik ("Chemist"). It led to an immediate promotion of the team in 1973. The next season was notable for being the first in the second level league after a seven years break, as well as the first to be played on qrtificial ice, although the games were still held at an outdoor stadium.
In 1975, Khimik Omsk was given to the Omsk Tire Factory and subsequently was renamed Shinnik ("Tiremaker"). In 1981, the team then affiliated with Omsktransmash and received its current name, Avangard Omsk. In 1987, the players moved to the long-awaited Irtysh Sports Complex, the team's first indoor arena.
In 1990, after 27 years of balancing between the second and the third divisions of Soviet hockey, Avangard was finally given the opportunity to play in the qualification tournament for the top league. Even though Omsk players were not successful at the time, the team was ultimately promoted to the top league after the 1991 series and joined the first and the last CIS championship. During that season, Leonid Kiselev's Avangard surpassed the success of the 1960s Aeroflot, rising up to 12th place in the league.
Kiselev continued to coach Avangard on its way to become an acknowledged major club in the International Hockey League. For its inaugural season, the team was joined by Evgeni Shastin, a 1980s Soviet hockey star and an Omsk hockey school alumnus. Finishing third in the Eastern Conference, Omsk went on to the playoffs and advanced to the quarterfinals. After a lacklustre 1993–94 season, Avangard repeated that success in 1995 becoming second in the East and returning to the quarterfinals, where it was eventually defeated by that year's champions, Dynamo Moscow.
The history of the 1990s' Avangard team culminated in the 1995–96 season. Despite finishing second in the Eastern Conference, the team was tied in points with Ufa's Salavat Yulaev after the final round (it was the only IHL season when the championship was decided separately from the cup playoffs), which led to a minor conflict between the teams and the league that was resolved when both Avangard and Salavat receiving bronze medals. The main stars of that first-ever medal roster of Omsk were Nikolai Marinenko, Oleg Kryazhev and Andrei Rasolko.
During the next season, the first in the newly established Superleague of the Russian Championship, Avangard was joined by forward Maxim Sushinsky, the most successful player of the upcoming era in the club's history. 
After Kiselev's departure in October 1997, Anatoly Bardin became the team's new president, while IHL Cup-winning Head Coach Vladimir Golubovich took the head coach position. By the end of the season, the team finished sixth overall, but for the second season in a row lost in the quarterfinals to Metallurg Magnitogorsk. In the 1998–99 season, the newly refreshed Avangard launched a rebranding campaign under the Omskie Yastreby (Омские Ястребы, Omsk Hawks) banner, changing the logo to the present design and the team colours to black and red. Omsk ended up fourth in the regular championship tying with Dynamo Moscow and became third in the league by attendance, but yet again could not progress past the semifinals after a 2–1 series defeat to Torpedo Yaroslavl. In 1999, Golubovich's team also reached third in the IIHF Continental Cup, the second-level pan-European ice hockey club tournament, tying in points with that year's champions HC Ambrì-Piotta of Switzerland.
In the course of the 1999–2000 season, the club opted to switch coaches in favour of Gennady Tsygurov, who came to rebuild the team, turning to a young generation of local Omsk players, including future talents such as Alexander Svitov and Egor Shastin. Even though the replacement damaged the club's position in the season table and failed to help Avangard progress past the quarterfinals against rivals Metallurg Magnitogorsk, the team's line of Dmitry Zatonsky, Ravil Yakubov and Maxim Sushinsky still finished the year as the most productive line in the league. During Tsygurov's tenure, Yakubov was later replaced by Alexander Prokopiev to form one of the most potent lines in the club's history. In the 2001–02 season, Avangard's top trio was named the most productive line of the league. Its leader, Maxim Sushinsky, became a playoff MVP in both the 2000–01 and 2001–02 seasons, also being picked for the 2002 Superleague All-Star Team. In 2000–01, the Hawks were also joined by native Omsk defenceman Kirill Koltsov, that season's rookie of the year. In 2001, the team led by Sushinsky became the first Avangard team to reach the championship finals but lost to Magnitogorsk 4–2. The next season was less successful for Omsk as they were once again stopped in the semifinals by Magnitogorsk.
During the early 2000s, Avangard became one of the first Russian hockey clubs to invite high-profile foreign players. Prior to the 2001–02 season, they signed 2000 World Championship MVP Martin Procházka and in 2002, he was joined by two more Czech national team players—Pavel Patera and Tomáš Vlasák. Former teammates with HC Kladno and AIK IF Patera and Procházka formed an all-Czech forward line for Omsk. The team's Czech reinforcement of 2002 was finalized when famed Olympic-winning coach Ivan Hlinka became Avangard's new head coach.
Despite relative success of Hlinka's Avangard in both regular season and postseason performance, the line of Procházka Patera and Vlasák line was named the most productive line in the league, with Vlasák leading the league in points. During the year's playoffs, in the quarterfinals against Dynamo Moscow, Avangard became the first RSL team ever to win a series after being behind two games to none. During the 2003 playoffs' semifinals, the team was not able to defeat a significantly weaker Severstal Cherepovets team and eventually lost the third-place series to Magnitogorsk. Finishing the season, Hlinka decided to retire as a coach in favour of his career as an agent.
Avangard Omsk won the RSL title in 2004, which qualified them for the inaugural IIHF European Champions Cup. They would be the first winners of that competition, beating Kärpät from the Finnish SM-liiga.
==Honors==
===Champions===
* Gagarin Cup: 2021
* Russian Superleague: 2004
* KHL Continental Cup: 2011
* Opening Cup: 2019-20, 2021-22
* IIHF European Champions Cup: 2005
* Soviet League Class A2: 1990 
===Runners-up===
* Gagarin Cup: 2012, 2019
* Russian Superleague: 2001, 2006
* Russian Superleague: 2007
* IIHF Continental Cup: 2007
* IHL: 1996
==Season-by-season KHL record==
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, OTW = Overtime/Shootout Wins, OTL = Overtime/Shootout Losses, 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	19	8 	24	5 	78 	161	164	4th, Kharlamov 	Jaromír Jágr 	Lost in Quarterfinals, 3–2 (Ak Bars Kazan)
2009–10	56	24	4 	18	10 	90 	152	128	2nd, Chernyshev	Jaromír Jágr 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 3-0 (Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk)
2010–11	54	31	11 	9 	3 	118	176	120	1st, Chernyshev	Roman Červenka 	Lost in Conference Semifinals, 3-4 (Metallurg Magnitogorsk)
2011–12	54	26	5 	18	5 	93 	133	115	1st, Chernyshev	Roman Červenka 	Lost in Finals, 4–3 (Dynamo Moscow)
2012–13	52	26	9 	11	6 	102	149	121	1st, Chernyshev	Tomáš Záborský 	Lost in Conference Semifinals, 1–4 (Traktor Chelyabinsk)
2013–14	54	17	6 	25	6 	69 	136	162	5th, Chernyshev	Alexander Perezhogin	Did not qualify
2014–15	60	30	5 	17	8 	108	172	139	2nd, Chernyshev	Denis Parshin 	Lost in Conference Semifinals, 1–4 (Ak Bars Kazan)
2015–16	60	27	6 	14	13 	106	156	120	1st, Chernyshev	Alexander Perezhogin	Lost in Conference Semifinals, 3–4 (Salavat Yulaev Ufa)
2016–17	60	30	8 	19	3 	109	156	127	1st, Chernyshev	Nikolai Lemtyugov 	Lost in Conference Semifinals, 2–4 (Ak Bars Kazan)
2017–18	56	22	7 	19	8 	88 	146	116	2nd, Chernyshev	Ilya Mikheyev 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 3–4 (Salavat Yulaev Ufa)
2018–19	62	29	10 	18	5 	83 	177	133	2nd, Chernyshev	Ilya Mikheyev 	Lost in Gagarin Cup Finals, 0–4 (CSKA Moscow)
2019–20	62	30	7 	16	9 	83 	163	120	2nd, Chernyshev	Kirill Semyonov 	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 2–4 (Salavat Yulaev Ufa)
2020–21	60	33	3 	12	12 	84 	180	134	1st, Chernyshev	Reid Boucher 	Gagarin Cup Champions, 4–2 (CSKA Moscow)
2021–22	47	24	4 	17	2 	58 	137	104	2nd, Chernyshev	Corban Knight 	Lost in Conference Semifinals, 3–4 (Metallurg Magnitogorsk)
2022–23	68	27	12 	21	8 	86 	188	164	2nd, Chernyshev	Vladimir Tkachev 	Lost in Conference Finals, 1–4 (Ak Bars Kazan)
2023–24	68	31	12 	19	6 	92 	211	181	1st, Chernyshev	Reid Boucher 	Lost in Quarterfinals, 3–4 (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl)
==External links==
* Avangard Omsk official website 
Category:Ice hockey teams in Russia