HC Dinamo Minsk - History

History

The origins of the club begin in 1966, where the original Dinamo played 5 seasons in the Soviet Top Ice Hockey League, with its highest finish being 10th place in the 1989/90 season. Dinamo was renamed as Tivali Minsk in 1993 and four times became a champion of the Belarusian Championship in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2000. Tivali was disbanded in 2000. Dinamo was founded in 2003, taking the name of the historic club, and won champion title and Belarus Cup twice.

On March 26, 2008, the KHL confirmed the Belarusian club's inclusion in the Bobrov Division. Dinamo-Minsk started to play on the ice of Minsk Palace of Sports and was relocated to the newly built Minsk-Arena in December 2009. The first head coach of the Belarusian club was Paul Gardner, who was dismissed until the championship had begun. The next one became Jim Hughes, a protégé of previous Belarus national team head coach Curt Fraser. But after the first twelve games the team came down next to the last place and soon Jim Hughes was dismissed. New vacancy was taken by Russian specialist Vasili Spiridonov whose efforts were not enough to raise Dinamo-Minsk from the bottom of the tournament table. The club became the 22nd out of 24 teams.

The next season team began under command of Glen Hanlon, who brought the Belarus national team to the sixth place at WC2006 in Riga. The team roster was fulfilled with world famous players Ville Peltonen and Ossi Väänänen, also one of best the Belarus goalkeepers Andrei Mezin was employed by HC Dinamo-Minsk. Season of 2009/2010 was alike to the previous. Team hadn't showed good result and Glen Hanlon was substituted by head coach of HK Homiel. Dinamo-Minsk finished at the 17th spot in the KHL, while missing the play-offs, but still managed to win Spengler Cup under the guidance of Alexander Andrievsky.

Season 2010/2011 became the best season in KHL history of Dinamo-Minsk. The new head coach of the team became Marek Sýkora. Pan Sýkora is widely thought as one of the best coaches of Kontinental Hockey League. He brought Metallurg Magnitogorsk to the final games in 2005 and a rookie of the KHL Avtomobilist to KHL play-offs in 2010. Dinamo-Minsk under his command managed not only to get into the play-offs, but stayed in one step from the Western Conference semi-finals when Lokomotiv prevailed in the decisive game seven of the series. Also Dinamo-Minsk was named the most attended club in the KHL after the 2010-2011 season.

The new season of Dinamo-Minsk was to have begun on September 8, 2011 versus Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. However, on September 7, 2011, a plane carrying the Lokomotiv team to the game in Minsk crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all of the team's roster. Four days later, a memorial ceremony took place at the Minsk-Arena, with all Minsk players paying tributes to each one of the victims.