Oleg Znarok is a Soviet and Latvian hockey player. Master of Sports and Honored Coach of Russia. For a long time, he headed one of the strongest teams in the KHL, St. Petersburg SKA and the Russian national hockey team.
Biography
On January 2, 1963, Oleg Valerievich Znarok was born in the city of Ust-katav. The father of the future hockey player was an athlete, a respected locally football coach. That is why from an early age the boy went in for sports. My father also worked in the hockey section. From the age of three, he began to teach his son to ice skate. Perhaps this played a decisive role in the choice of the hockey profession.
Career
The official start of Oleg Znarka's professional hockey career is his debut for Traktor Chelyabinsk, in which he successfully played for four years. After a bright start to his career, consolidated by successful games throughout all four years, the talented player was noticed in the main club of the country, CSKA. The znarok was insanely happy with such attention and was ready to move to the capital club immediately. However, his father dissuaded him.
One of the reasons for the transition from Traktor to Dynamo Riga is considered to be a big conflict with the veterans of the Chelyabinsk club, which was followed by disqualification. After moving to Riga, Znarok joined the local Dynamo, where he spent most of his playing career. In 1992, Oleg Znarok moved to the United States, where he played for one season in the national AHL championship for the Maine Mariners team. Then followed a series of foreign clubs, he managed to play in Germany and the Czech Republic. In 2002, he retired as a player.
Since 2006, he made his debut as a head coach, headed the Latvian national team. For 5 years spent in the national team, he did not achieve particularly outstanding results. The maximum height that he took with the Latvian team - in 2009 at the World Championship, the team reached the quarter-finals.
Russian team
Since 2014, he has headed the Russian national team. In the same year, after the infamous performance of the national team at the home Olympics in Sochi, the team led by Znark won the world championship. Then the results went downhill. The following year, the Russian national team was only able to reach the final, where they suffered a crushing defeat from the principal rivals of the Canadian national team 1-6.
In 2016 and 2017, the Russian national team was content with only bronze medals. In his coaching career, there was another "exotic" team - "Olympic athletes from Russia", formally this is the same team, but due to doping scandals, athletes from Russia were banned from playing under the national flag. Oleg Znarok led this team to the coveted Olympic gold, which the Russian team has not won for 26 years.
Personal life
The famous coach is married. He first saw his chosen one in the stands of the stadium. Later he met her at a restaurant and then decided - this is fate. Since then they have been together, the couple have two children, girls Valeria and Alisa.
