CSKA Moscow hockey team stands for Central Sports Club of the Army, Moscow (ЦСКА Москва, Центральный Спортивный Клуб Армии) is one of the Russian professional ice hockey club based in Moscow. The club has a membership in the Tarasov Division in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) as it is an official requirement in Russian sports regulation. CSKA Moscow hockey team is also known as the “Central Red Army” or the “Red Army Team”. This is because the CSKA Moscow hockey team had a partnership and the team was mainly powered by the Soviet Army, and that is the reason it is popularly known as the Red Army. Currently, the CSKA Moscow hockey team is managed by Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft.
The CSKA Moscow hockey team won Soviet championships and European cups more than any other team in history. The first coach of the CSKA Moscow hockey team was Anatoli Tarasov either alone or with co-coaches from 1946 to 1975, who would later become the coach of the Soviet national team. The team’s greatest improvements came under Viktor Tikhonov, who was a coach from 1977 to 1996, and later he served for most of that time as coach of the national team.
Head coaches from 2012
1. Vyacheslav Butsayev: 2012 – 2013
2. United States John Torchetti: 2013 – 2014
3. Russia Dmitri Kvartalnov: 2014 – 2017
4. Kazakhstan Igor Nikitin: 2017 – present
Winning History
CSKA Moscow hockey team has won the Gagarin Cup Finals three times, in 2016, 2018, and 2019. The club also became the first winner to win both the Continental Cup and the Gagarin Cup in the same year. CSKA Moscow hockey team won 32 Soviet regular-season championships during the Soviet League’s 46-year existence, far and away the most in the league’s history and no other team won more than five times.
CSKA played 36 games with the National Hockey league from 1975 to 1991 and recorded a record of 26 wins, 8 losses, and 2 ties. 34 of these games were played in the Super Series, plus the tour of North America in 1975/1976.
Another memorable game was played on 11 January 1976 against the Philadelphia Flyers, who at the time were the defending Stanley Cup Champions and were known as the “Broad Street Bullies” for their highly physical play. As a remarkable incident, NHL president Clarence Campbell returned to the ice and finished the game, which was live broadcast to an international audience. Therefore the Hockey Federation would not get paid the fee that they were entitled to.
