The International Ice Hockey Federation puts on a tournament every season, with many of your favourite nations putting together teams of Simulation Hockey League players and battling it out to be the very best in the world. All of these nations have a leader, both on the ice and in the board room, and I am lucky enough to be the new board room leader of the Russian Federation. It is a nation with a long history in this league, and have won 7 medals, including 2 Golds, in 47 tournaments. A winning percentage of 0.464 is certainly not bad for a country that has long had a hard time recruiting new members compared to smaller (in land mass) countries, but there is room for improvement.

And that's why I am here.

Today we are going to look at our goaltenders, and at the same time, promote Russia in a legally binding way.



GOALTENDERS

S60 - Zhen Roza
Russian Career - 17GP - 6W - 6L - 2OTL - 2.84GAA - 0.906SV%

The starting goaltender for a long time, Evgeni Petrov, has retired, which means a new goaltender is going to have to step up for the S70 tournament coming. Zhen Roza is an inactive goaltender who backs up in Hamilton and has a career 17 games played on the world stage since debuting in S64. Roza is not the long term solution in net for Team Russia, but could be the only option. The numbers that he's put up in limited minutes is promising, but the fact that he is not going to get any better is very concerning for the future.

S62 - Dominik Tretyak
Russian Career - N/A

The current backup, and frankly, the only other goaltender in the Russian Federation, is an undrafted goalie from S62. Tretyak had a tremendous SMJHL career with Anchorage, playing 87 games over 2 seasons and winning 62 of them. Unfortunately, he hasn't had any success since, and have bounced around a few organizations as a backup goaltender in the SHL. He could see some time on Russia's national team if something doesn't change.

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Now, both the goaltenders in our Federation are inactive, which means that it is a tremendous time for a younger, active goaltender to get games in and start a long (and hopefully successful) International career. Since making the switch to FHM from SimonT, the Russian Federation has had 2 starting goaltenders. So, from Season 53 to Season 69 (17 tournaments), there have been two goaltenders with the majority of the starts. Samat Beibitzhanov and Evgeni Petrov have been instrumental in maintaining calm and stability behind Russia's defense, and it took Petrov 7 seasons from when he was drafted to be the starting goaltender.

Russia is looking for goaltenders. Where are they? There may not be another Federation with a more dire positional situation.

The Russian Federation has had a long line of top notch goaltenders over the last 47 tournaments. Who will be the next one?

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