Fyodor Kanareikin will replace Andrei Sidorenko as the coach of Spartak Moscow, the hockey team announced Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday, Sidorenko became the fifth KHL coach to lose his job this month after Spartak won seven of 22 games this season, leaving the four-time Soviet champion second from last in the Western Conference.
Kanareikin, 57, has already led his first training session with the team that he had coached twice before, in the 1997-98 season and in 2002.
“I want to fulfill those tasks assigned by the management for the season,” Kanareikin told R-Sport.
“The most important thing now is to find contact with the team, to notch up points through monotonous work and to catch hold of the playoff zone.”
Spartak didn’t qualify for the playoffs last year and is now four points behind eighth-placed Vityaz Chekhov, the last team in the playoff places.
Kanareikin will have his first test on Friday in a derby clash against lockout star Alex Ovechkin’s Dynamo Moscow.
“It will be a good game that we will seriously prepare for, the same as our opponent,” Kanareikin said.
Kanareikin won the Russian Championship with Metallurg Magnitogorsk in 2007.
Last week, Josef Jandac was fired at Lev Prague and Andrei Shayanov at Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg.
Earlier this month, Dynamo Minsk coach Kari Heikkila became the first coach to be fired this season, and he was swiftly followed by Atlant Moscow Region's Janne Karlsson.
