Because I am a little bored right now, here is a long-ass thread explaining the names and visual identities of Russian hockey teams so that you folks never again have to ask me what the hell they are. Let's go...
CSKA Moscow. Calling it "Red Army" or "Central Red Army" is purely a North American thing. Central Sports Club of the Army was the actual name, though it has historically been CDKA (Cnt Red Army Club), CDSA (Cnt Soviet Army Club) and CSK MO (Cnt Sports Club of the Defense Min) 
They wear red and blue, the colors of the Soviet Army, and were at one point synonymous with the Soviet national team, being able to "draft" any promising young player they wanted into the military. Nowadays, their prowess is due to a limitless budget and Putin connections.
Dinamo Moscow/Minsk/Riga... Dinamo is a "sports society" founded by NKVD, the Soviet police (and occasionally secret police) administrative agency. The name was thought up by one of he founders who used to work at the Moscow Dynamo Factory. The colors were always blue and white.
Moscow still wears these colors, but Riga has switched to Latvia's national ensemble (maroon, white, black), while Minsk is doing its own thing with black and azure. None of them have anything to do with police anymore. All three retain some form of the traditional D as the logo.
Severstal Cherepovets. The name is taken from the sponsor, the Northern Steel company which is the major heavy industry employer in the region. They wear black and yellow, being pretty in tune with the whole Pittsburgh theme.
"Steelers" is one nickname, "Bobcats" is another.
"Steelers" is one nickname, "Bobcats" is another.
SKA St. Petersburg. Non-Moscow Army teams were not entitled to using "Central" in their names (or to "drafting" the best available players in Soviet times), relegating SKA to an ugly-sister status. Now, though, their Putin-friends-supplied budget is monstrous.
Spartak Moscow. The Russian spelling of Spartacus. The "sports society" was founded by a Moscow soccer team, apocryphally when their captain/founder glimpsed at his bookshelf and saw an eponymous novel. Spartacus was considered a hero in Russia, as a fighter against exploitation.
They never wear anything other than red and white and their logo with a Cyrillic "S" in a rhombus is iconic. Also iconic was their status as a non-government-affiliated "People's Club", rooting for which was a mild form of social protest. Dubious, since Brezhnev was a big fan.
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. A team from a city where hockey is actually the No. 1 sport. Owned by the Russian Railroads, hence the name and the logo. Red, white and blue are the colors.
"Lokomotiv" was a Soviet "sports society" for Transportation Ministry-affiliated teams.
"Lokomotiv" was a Soviet "sports society" for Transportation Ministry-affiliated teams.
HC Sochi. An expansion team from a city with exactly zero hockey fans, put there simply because the Olympic arena needed to be utilized somehow. Nicknamed "the leopards", they wear San Jose colors to be different from the ubiquitous red, white and blue of the KHL.
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod... "Torpedo" was a "sports society" for automotive-industry teams in the USSR, allegedly named after the first, aborted racing car made in Russia. The NN team is owned by GAZ, Russia's truck/minivan manufacturer. The deer is from the city coat of arms.
Vityaz Podolsk. The Russian name for a noble warrior (not really a knight, but close). The colors are red and white, the logo depicts a Russian shield and words "God is with us", a rather presumptuous motto for a perennial also-ran.
Ak Bars Kazan. Means "snow) leopard" in Tatar. This team was originally known as The Moisey Uritsky Sports Club of Kazan (awesome for chanting before settling on the national symbol of Tatars and their flag colors, green, white and red.
Lots of money, can't buy a decent logo🤷♂️
Lots of money, can't buy a decent logo🤷♂️
Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg. This name, which rolls beautifully off the tongue, is homage to Soviet times when an older club, named after the regional transportation authority, played in the USSR League. The current team is owned directly by the provincial govt. Red, white, black.
Metallurg Magnitogorsk. The entire city is owned by the local metallurgical factory, the largest in Europe, and this includes the team. Blue, white, red and orange are the colors, while a fox, the team's mascot, is on the logo. Not an animal known for its metallurgical prowess...
Another catchy brand is Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk. This Tatar city is wholly dependent on the local oil refinery, which is what "petroleum chemist" actually means. The wolf, another nomadic symbol, is a recent invention. Previous brands were extremely simplistic.
Sibir Novosibirsk. The city name means "New Siberian City" and the team's name is "Siberia", so I give you 3 guesses about where it's from. Used to have a logo stolen from Montreal. The snowflake symbolizes insane amounts of snow in the city. Colors are sky blue and navy.
Traktor Chelyabinsk. Founded by a local tractor factory, it used to have standard Soviet gears as its logo. Until it went to Switzerland for a tourney and the locals made fun of them and told them they should have a fierce animal. So they hired a local 3-year-old to draw them one
Admiral Vladivostok. The city is Russia's most important Pacific port, so there. Originally the logo was an anchor, which is stationary and sinks to the bottom, so they thought a bit and changed it.
Amur Khabarovsk. Named after the river, which serves as Russia's border with China. Siberian tigers are an important symbol of the Russian Far East, though for most of its existence the team used the city's coat of arms, which features a bear. This is a big improvement.
Avangard Omsk. Simply the phonetic spelling of "avant guard", a Soviet name taken by heavy industry teams. The Siberian team had numerous monikers as it wandered from one local sponsor to another. Nicknamed "the Hawks" because a former president had a hawk statuette in his office
Barys Nur-Sultan. Hey, another leopard, now from Kazakhstan! Snow leopards are important in Turkic nomad mythology. I once wrote that the pseudo-Arabic script is the best thing about the logo, so the mayor of Nur-Sultan said "If an American likes it, it stays forever."
Salavat Yulayev Ufa. Named after the national hero of Bashkortostan, a general in the XVIII-century peasant rebellion and a poet who wrote in a literary Turkic language. Yulayev spent 25 of his 46 years on Earth doing hard labor in Siberia until eventually dying there.
Correction: in Estonia, actually, which apparently was just as bad in those days (swampy, boring, terrible soccer... bad).
Bonus: Krylya Sovetov Moscow. The Soviet Wings or, more accurately, Wings of the Soviets. Owned by a factory that produced airplane parts, though this fact was a poorly held state secret, and commentators usually called them "profsoyuzniki" of "a trade union squad..."
An iconic outfit from a working-class area of Moscow whose rink could maybe accommodate 5000 if nobody told the fire chief. They have stopped competing in pro hockey and only operate a junior team, but the echo of their 12-6 defeat to the Sabres still reverberates through Buffalo
Their old logo has real Super Bowl vibes going.
