SKA St. Petersburg coach Milos Riha was heavily criticized by the team’s general manager and pundits on Thursday for leaving the team’s bench before the end of a 3-1 KHL playoff defeat.
Riha sparked the debate by leaving the bench after Atlant Moscow Region scored an empty-net goal with seconds on the clock in the team’s Western Conference semifinal clash.
Double Olympic champion Alexander Kozhevnikov branded Riha’s move “psychologically abnormal” in an interview with RIA Novosti, while SKA’s general manager Alexey Kastatonov compared him to a captain leaving a sinking ship.
“There’s overall team discipline and an unspoken rule which states the captain of a ship shouldn’t be the first to leave the bridge,” Kastatonov told Russian website sportbox.ru.
He did not rule out disciplinary measures, but said that the management would judge Riha on the season as a whole.
“The important thing is the result at the end. We’ll take measures based on the results of the season, not one match.”
Kozhevnikov, who won gold at the 1984 and 1988 Winter Olympics with the Soviet team, said he doubted that Riha should continue to coach the team.
“That event didn’t happen once in my career, that a coach chucked his team and left. You probably need to write about him leaving after this,” he told RIA Novosti.
“It’s something psychologically abnormal. Obviously there’s huge pressure on Riha, but he should keep himself under control somehow.”
SKA leads Atlant 3-2 in the Western Conference semifinal series, with the next game scheduled for Friday.
Atlant, then coached by Riha, defeated SKA at the same stage of the competition last year with a late surge, on the way to the Gagarin Cup final, where Atlant lost to Salavat Yulaev Ufa.
Czech coach Riha has won one Czech and two Slovak league titles, and has also coached KHL team Spartak Moscow.
