Minsk Is Where It Gets Real: New-Look Dragons Ready for First Test

After nearly two weeks of work in Belarus, Mitch Love’s rebuilt Shanghai team is about to trade training-camp drills for game action. The Minsk Cup should provide an early glimpse of what the new-look Dragons can become.

MINSK — August hockey rarely comes with definitive answers.

Lines change. Systems are still being installed. Players are fighting for roles, coaches are experimenting, and the points don’t follow anyone into September.

But for the Shanghai Dragons, the next few days in Minsk should still tell us plenty.

On Thursday, Shanghai will open the Minsk Cup against host Dinamo Minsk before facing Metallurg Magnitogorsk less than 24 hours later. The Dragons, Dinamo and Metallurg make up Group A, while Sibir, Admiral and Sochi will compete in Group B. After the round-robin stage, the teams will cross over for placement games, including the tournament final.

It will be the KHL’s first preseason tournament of the summer and, for Shanghai, the first real test of a team that has spent the offseason changing at almost every level.

That makes this more than just a couple of exhibition games.

It is the first chance to see what the Dragons look like when somebody on the other side of the ice is trying to beat them.

Love finally gets a preseason of his own

There is an important difference between the team Mitch Love took over last winter and the one he is preparing now: this one has had time to become his.

Love inherited Shanghai midway through a difficult stretch last season, taking over after Gerard Gallant’s departure and immediately turning his attention to the defensive side of the game. There were clear improvements, but the Dragons had already lost too much ground. They eventually finished ninth in the Western Conference and missed the playoffs.

This summer, there has been no emergency handover and no attempt to rewrite the playbook while simultaneously chasing points.

There has been a training camp.

There has been time.

And there has been a message.

“We need to come together as quickly as possible, roll up our sleeves and become a team,” Love said before the Dragons arrived in Minsk.

That process has been underway since the beginning of August. Shanghai’s preseason plan called for three training blocks in Minsk before moving into tournament competition — a progression designed to take the group from conditioning and individual work into systems, structure and, finally, game situations.

Now comes the final part.

Training camp can teach a system. The Minsk Cup will reveal how quickly players can execute it under pressure.

Assistant coach Troy Ward has already made his belief in that structure clear.

“Mitch Love’s system will work effectively,” Ward said while breaking down the Dragons’ approach during camp.

Starting Thursday, Shanghai gets its first chance to prove it.

New faces, higher expectations

The scale of the summer rebuild makes that challenge even more intriguing.

KHL.ru noted that 24 players departed shortly after the transfer market opened, with club president Ilya Kovalchuk and general manager Evgeny Artyukhin embarking on another major reconstruction of the roster. The result is a group that combines returning pieces with an influx of players bringing NHL, AHL and KHL experience.

Among the newcomers is goaltender Amir Miftakhov, signed after spending last season with the Chicago Wolves in the AHL. The 26-year-old already has 87 KHL appearances from his earlier stint with Ak Bars and gives Shanghai another experienced option in net. Defenseman Brennan Menell also arrives after recording 18 points in 60 games for SKA last season — and returns to a city where he previously played for Dinamo Minsk.

For the returning players, meanwhile, there is little ambiguity about where the bar has moved.

Nic Petan put it simply before camp.

“I think the expectations are higher this season, and I’m looking forward to doing whatever I can to help the team.”

Those expectations are exactly why Minsk matters.
Not because anybody will remember the August standings six months from now, but because a team with this many new pieces needs competitive reps together. Forecheck routes have to become instinctive. Defensive-zone reads have to happen without hesitation. Power-play units need to find timing. New linemates need to learn where each other will be before the puck gets there.

And players brought in to change the personality of the team need to start doing exactly that.

Givani Smith, one of Shanghai’s new additions up front, arrived with a straightforward goal.

“I’m really excited to get to work as soon as possible and start winning games,” Smith said.

Minsk offers the first opportunity.

No easing into it

Shanghai won’t exactly be allowed to work through its growing pains quietly.

First up is Dinamo Minsk on Thursday night at Olympic Arena. The hosts enter a new chapter of their own under Sergei Brylin, the three-time Stanley Cup champion who took over as head coach this summer after more than a decade coaching in North America.

Then comes Metallurg on Friday afternoon.

Two games in less than 24 hours against quality KHL opposition is about as useful a preseason stress test as Love could ask for. There will be tired legs, quick lineup decisions and very little time to correct mistakes between games.

That’s the point.

For the coaching staff, the scoreboard will matter. But the details behind it may matter even more: how Shanghai exits its zone under pressure, how connected the five-man units look, whether the team’s pace survives beyond the opening period, and how quickly a roster assembled over the summer begins to look like something more than a collection of names.

The tournament also gives Love and his staff their first meaningful opportunity to evaluate combinations before the next phase of preparation and the Mayor of Moscow Cup later this month. Shanghai’s regular season begins in September; by then, experimentation becomes considerably more expensive.

Minsk is where some of those questions can start getting answered.

The first checkpoint

Nobody wins a playoff spot in August.

Nobody loses one, either.

But good teams usually begin establishing their identity long before the standings start counting.

For Shanghai, that is what this week is about.

The Dragons have a new-look roster, a coaching staff with a full preseason to implement its ideas and a group of players openly talking about raising expectations. After days of testing, meetings, practices and systems work in Minsk, the controlled part of camp is over.

Now there’s an opponent.

Now there’s a scoreboard.

And now, for the first time this season, we’ll get to see what these Dragons look like when the game gets real.

Shanghai Dragons at the Minsk Cup

August 13, 19:00 — Dinamo Minsk vs. Shanghai Dragons
August 14, 16:00 — Metallurg Magnitogorsk vs. Shanghai Dragons
August 17 — Placement game

All games will be played at Olympic Arena in Minsk.

Shanghai Dragons Media Relations