The SKA hockey club was eliminated from the Gagarin Cup playoffs at the quarterfinal stage due to biased refereeing, says the chairman of the team’s board of directors, Alexander Medvedev.
In a statement dated March 26, posted on the official website of SKA, Medvedev said that during his years of work in the sports industry he had never commented on refereeing, but the results of his club’s match with Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg the day before “exceeded the cup of patience.”
“Throughout the entire season, the club has been faced with similar questionable decisions from referees… There is no other way to explain this other than bias.”– indicated in the message.
According to the functionary, it was unfair to send off goalkeeper Nikita Serebryakov, who received a two-minute penalty for tripping, hitting a player from the opposing team with his stick.
“Well, how was it possible to send off Nikita Serebryakov, who played the puck clearly? And the moment at the end with the delay of the puck? More than 20 thousand people in the arena saw what was happening. This is simply nonsense.”,” Medvedev wrote.
He also drew attention to the fact that SKA is leading in the number of fines this season by a wide margin. The head of the board of directors added that SKA players often get injured due to the opponent’s “dirty” play, which remains out of sight of the referees.
Medvedev complained that “dubious” decisions of the referee teams could destroy the results of months of hard work by all club employees, calling on the referees to change their approach to work.
Let us remind you that on March 25, the fifth match of the second round of the Gagarin Cup took place between SKA and Avtomobilist. The army team lost with a score of 5:4 and dropped out of the race to win the tournament. For the Ekaterinburg team, this is the first time they have reached the semi-finals of the Cup.
