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KHL's Barys Astana announced today that they have hired 47-year old Andrei Skabelka to a two-year deal naming him the new head coach of the Kazakh club.
The Belarussian coach was hired to coach Avangard Omsk last season but was quickly cut in December.
Before joining Avangard Skabelka spent three seasons as the head coach of Novosibirsk Sibir and Torpedo Nizhni-Novgorod prior to that.
In his career 47-year old has coached Team Belarus and worked as an assistant of Kari Heikila during his stint with Dinamo Riga.
After 2012 failure at the World Championships he was given keys to lead Team Belarus at the Sochi Olympic qualifications tournament as well as World hockey championships.
Skabelka can't be proud of his achievements with Team Belarus but he has certainly gained a lot of experience in his career. Belarus did not qualify for the Olympics and left the elite division in 2013.
Barys this season finished 10th in the Western conference and for the second time in three years couldn't qualify for the Gagarin Cup playoffs where the team had played for the first seven years since the league was created.