Best players of the OLIMPBET Junior Hockey League will compete within the framework of Fonbet All-Star Week, that will be hosted by two cities in December 2023.

Women’s All-Star Game and JHL Challenge Cup will be held in Tula. KHL Skills competition and All-Star Game will be hosted by new SKA-Arena in Saint Petersburg on December 9 and 10.

Challenge Cup is the game in which best young players give a hundred and ten percent to give the win to their conference. Nine out of 12 games were won by one or two goals. Team West leads 8:4, but the latest two Challenge Cups (2020, 2022) were won by Team East. 

Four best players of the game will traditionally participate in KHL Skills competition and All-Star Game. Igor Geraskin, Nikolai Kovalenko, Andrei Altybarmakyan, Yegor Korobkin, Ivan Demidov and other players travelled this path in different years. 

Tula will become the 11th host city for JHL Challenge Cup game. Hockey is being actively developed there on the basis of the local academy. The arena with a seating capacity of more than 3,000 was opened in August 2020. In the 2020/21 season, Mikhailov Academy played their first game in the JHL; the main team of the system – AKM, has been playing in the VHL since 2021; in 2022, the second team from Tula – AKM-Yunior, joined the Junior Hockey League. 

Mikhailov Academy is among the leaders of the League in average attendance. In the 2022/23 season, the Tula team made their first playoffs. Kirill Pukelo, a participant of the 2022 Challenge Cup, became the League’s top scorer. Mikhailov Academy started the 2023/24 season with four wins in Gold Division and is leading the Western Conference.

In 2023, All-Star Week will be hosted by two cities for the first time ever. Challenge Cup will be held in Tula, a city where hockey is developing rapidly. Only three years ago the arena was opened and the junior team joined the JHL. Today there are two Tula teams playing in the League, and Mikhailov Academy is among the leaders of the Gold Division. In the 2022/23 season, team alumnus Kirill Pukelo became the JHL’s top scorer and participated in the Challenge Cup. We are very pleased that the game will take place in the city where hockey gets all-round development. We will carry on the tradition of the four best players of the game participating in KHL Skills competition and All-Star Game. In the previous five years, Igor Geraskin, Nikolai Kovalenko, Andrei Altybarmakyan, Yegor Korobkin, Ivan Demidov qualified for the event. Now they perform well in the Kontinental Hockey League. It shows that All-Star Week is an important part of the development of a junior player’s career..

Alexander Guskov, KHL Vice President for Junior Hockey Development

Challenge Cup games results by year:

2010, Saint Petersburg
Team West - Team East – 6:4 (1:1, 2:2, 3:1)

2011, Ufa
Team East - Team West – 3:2 SO (0:1, 0:1, 2:0, 0:0, 1:0)

2012, Magnitogorsk
Team East - Team West – 2:4 (1:0, 1:2, 0:2)

2013, Ekaterinburg
Team East - Team West – 3:1 (1:0, 1:1, 1:0)

2014, Nizhny Novgorod
Team East - Team West – 3:5 (0:1, 2:1,1:3)

2015, Cherepovets
Team West - Team East – 3:2 SO (0:1, 2:0, 0:1, 0:0, 1:0)

2016, Nizhnekamsk
Team East - Team West – 2:5 (1:1, 0:3, 1:1)

2017, Ufa
Team East - Team West – 1:2 SO (0:1, 0:0, 1:0, 0:0, 0:1)

2018, Astana
Team East - Team West – 3:7 (1:2, 1:3, 1:2)

2019, Nizhnekamsk
Team East - Team West – 0:2 (0:0, 0:1, 0:1)

2020, Moscow
Team West - Team East – 3:5 (2:4, 1:0, 0:1)

2022, Chelyabinsk
Team East - Team West – 5:2 (1:0, 1:1, 3:1)

Overall score – 8:4 for Team West.