International Ice Hockey Federation

Tsygurov passes away

Tsygurov passes away

Coached Russia to World Junior gold in 1999

Published 25.04.2017 09:17 GMT-4 | Author Martin Merk
Tsygurov passes away
Gennadi Tsygurov (left) as an assistant coach with the men’s national team with Vladimir Vasiliev and the late Viktor Tikhonov after winning the Izvestia Cup in 1995. Photo: Vladimir Rodionov / RIA Novosti
Former Russian coach Gennadi Tsygurov passed away on Wednesday at the age of 75 after long illness.

He was coaching several Russian teams both internationally and in the top Russian league and was also involved with the Kazakh national team.

One of Tsygurov’s greatest moments was when Russia beat host Canada 3-2 in the gold medal game Winnipeg after Artyom Chubarov’s overtime goal to claim the 1999 IIHF World Junior Championship. He had taken over the job due to Pyotr Vorobyov’s illness. It was Tsygurov’s second stint with the U20 team after leading Russia to a bronze-medal finish in 1994. And it was the first World Junior gold for Russia as a separate country after gold in the 1992 tournament where the team started as the Soviet Union and ended it as the Commonwealth of Independent Nations (CIS).

The Chelyabinsk native spent all his career as a player with his hometown team Traktor Chelyabinsk where he was respectfully nicknamed “Brigadir” and played 658 games. The defenceman from the Ural region was in a lifelong struggle with the mighty teams from Moscow but never won a championship as a player. In his last season he won his first medal when he scored in the game for bronze in 1977 against Viktor Tikhonov-led Dinamo Riga.

It was also at Traktor Chelyabinsk where he started his coaching career once he stopped playing. And when he later coached Lada Togliatti, he made it the first team not from Moscow to win a Russian/Soviet championship in 1994. In 1996 he led Lada to another championship and one year later the team won the European Cup.

In the ‘90s he became involved with the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia coaching the U20 national team and working as an assistant coach with the men’s national team as several tournaments including the 1999 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

He later also coached other Russian clubs teams such as Avangard Omsk, Torpedo Nizhni Novgorod, Kristall Saratov, MVD Tver and Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk and was an assistant coach for the Kazakh national team at four World Championship events and 2006 Olympics between 2003 and 2007.

His two sons Dmitri and Denis also played hockey. Denis was on the 1996 championship team of his father and later played in the NHL but passed away from a cardiac arrest on 10th January 2015. Before that he was collecting money for his father who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2014.

 

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