Description
History of meetings
The debut in Russian competitions of the Saratov club took place in the 1955/1956 season. Director of the 36th Aviazavod N.V. Lazarev-a former football player, ordered the creation of the Wings of the Soviets. It was compiled by 13 workshop workers. The “wings” quickly outgrown the intra -city level (up to 15 teams participated in Saratov’s hockey competitions).
In February 1958, the Wings of the Soviets made their way to the final of the RSFSR championship in Ulyanovsk. Favorites from Novosibirsk and Chelyabinsk brought there twenty fully equipped players. Beginners from Saratov, playing two “five” and without a coach, managed to give them a battle, eventually taking 3-month of eight participants and received the right to play in the USSR championship in group “B”.
The next milestone in the history of Saratov hockey was 1964. The team changed its name to the Vanguard and entered class A. In 1967, she was transferred to a lamp factory with another change of sign – to energy.
The most important event that gave a new impetus to the development of hockey in the city was the opening of the Crystal Ice Palace in 1969. Then the team of masters was attached to the Tantal plant, after which it got its current name Crystal.
Since then, the Volzhans have been one of the most noticeable Russian teams from the periphery for two decades-they spent 19 seasons in 1 league, pierced three times to the country's highest division.
The serious success of Crystal was the victory in the team of the first league team in the 1973/1974 season. But they failed to stay in the Super League – then the Leningrad SKA became a stumbling block then. And so several times.
In the days of the latest Russia, the Saratovites in the Premier League performed in the seasons 1992/1993 – 1997/1998. Having unsuccessfully playing in a transition tournament, the club was forced to return to the first echelon in the spring of 1998. Since then, despite all the difficulties, Crystal has always fought for going out into the playoffs. And I must say this was well done by the team, starting with 2003, the Crystal necessarily went out at 1/16.
After the collapse of the USSR, Crystal was included in the MHL (analogue of Super League or KHL). The most successful in the elite was the 1996/97 season, when the Saratovites reached the 1/8-8-finals of the playoffs of the Russian Championship, where they sensationally beat the Kazan Ak Bars. But, the next year, the club from the shores of the Volga overtook the financial crisis. Leading players began to leave the team and she left the elite. A group of hockey players settled in Almetyevsk: D. Konnov, E. Chulkov, S. Samoshkin, A. Krivonozhkin, V. Gushchin, V. Sapozhnikov, and Saratov specialists V. Kuplin and V. Belousov were in the oil industry with the main coaches.
In the Premier League, without large financial resources, the Crystal usually performs modestly. Talks on this topic arise almost every year, because To perform big tasks, support from the region and the city is insufficient. Local fans can only recall the previous times when their team fought against the best hockey players of the country.
When and how they played in the Super League: 1996 – 1998.
Saratov Crystal was founded in 1947, in Soviet times the team managed to get into the number of participants in the USSR championship only three times, and each time the Saratov team flew back to the First League. With the formation of the MHL, Kristall was immediately accepted into the new league, and then managed to take part in two Superleague championships. The club could not boast of high results, but it was marked by a unique record.
In the 1996/1997 season, Kristall, which took 15th place in the regular season, sensationally beat Ak Bars in the first round of the playoffs in a series of up to two victories. Nobody managed to defeat the favorite of such a low-seeded club in the championships of Russia until 2009, when the 16th Avangard passed Salavat Yulaev, who took first place. However, a year after this triumph, Kristall played in a transitional tournament for the right to remain in the Super League, and as a result, the Saratov team left the top echelon of Russian hockey.
Further fate: Crystal settled in the Major League for a long time and, due to limited financial resources, did not claim to be promoted, performing at a very average level. Moreover, in 2014 and 2017, Saratov was removed from the VHL championship for financial reasons, and from the 2017/2018 season, Kristall was forced to settle in the VHL-B championship, where the team also does not claim high places.