Mogilev

The summer of 2013 nearly ended HK Mogilev outright. Debts of roughly $500,000 pushed the club into bankruptcy, its leading players and coaching staff walked away, and word went round that a replacement side, Mogilev-2, would take its place in the second-tier Vysshaya Liga. Within weeks the Mogilev Regional Hockey Federation stepped in and kept the original name alive in the Extraliga for the 2013/14 season, fielding a squad built almost entirely from its own youth academy.

That reliance on home-grown players was not new. The club, known as HK Khimvolokno Mogilev between 2001 and 2010 after its sponsor, had already spent over a decade developing talent through its own system before reverting to the Mogilev name. Its best Extraliga finishes came early — silver in 2001/02, bronze the following two campaigns it reached that height — and a Belarusian Cup final appearance in 2005/06, but a national title has never followed. In the Eastern European Hockey League it topped Division B in 2001/02 and took bronze in the top flight two years later.

Games against Lokomotiv Orsha carry the weight of a regional derby. The Lions, as they are known locally, play in black and violet out of the Mogilev Ice Sports Palace, built the same year the club was founded.

Few names carry more weight in Mogilev than Dmitry Buinitsky, who came through the club's own academy before moving on to Dinamo Minsk and Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the KHL.