Metallurg was founded in 1955 by the
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) as a Class B team that competed in the
Chelyabinsk Oblast and the
RSFSR championships. Since 1980, they were led by the head coach
Valery Postnikov. Under his leadership, the club won the Second League Class B, a fourth-tier league, and was promoted to the third-tier Second League Class A, then won its championships twice, in 1988–89 and 1989–90 seasons. After two more seasons in the second level of Soviet hockey, Metallurg became one of the founders of the
International Hockey League (MHL), the first post-Soviet major professional hockey league. Thanks to MMK's funding, Metallurg acquired several key players from other clubs, including
Sergei Mogilnikov from
Torpedo Ust-Kamenogorsk,
Andrei Martemyanov from
Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg and Igor Ulshin from
HC Sibir Novosibirsk. In
their first season in the top flight, Metallurg managed to reach sixth place in the Eastern Conference, then upset
HC Spartak Moscow, one of the historic powerhouses of Soviet hockey, in the first round of the playoffs before falling to
Traktor Chelyabinsk in the second round. In the 1995 MHL playoffs, Metallurg reached the semifinals, and in 1996 they earned a spot in the final series, which they lost to
HC Dynamo Moscow 1–3. Valery Postnikov coached the team until 1996, then his assistant
Valery Belousov took over. Metallurg carried over their status as one of the strongest teams into the
Russian Superleague, and in the
1997–98 Russian Superleague season they won the cup for the first time, winning the final series 3–1 over Dynamo Moscow. This victory earned them a spot in the
1998–99 European Hockey League which they won. In the
next season, Metallurg won both the regular season and the playoffs, earning the title of Champions of Russia. They also won their second European title in the
1999-2000 European Hockey League. In total, Metallurg advanced to the
Russian Superleague finals six times and became a three-time champion of Russia. The club also won the
2008 edition of the
IIHF European Champions Cup and reached the finals the
Champions Hockey League in 2009, losing the final series to the Swiss
ZSC Lions.
Victoria Cup On 1 October 2008, Metallurg Magnitogorsk played against
NHL's
New York Rangers in the inaugural
Victoria Cup at the
PostFinance-Arena in
Bern with an attendance of 13,794. Metallurg Magnitogorsk led most of the game, 3–0 at one point, but ultimately lost 4–3 by the Rangers'
Ryan Callahan breakaway goal with 20 seconds remaining in the game. Denis Platonov,
Vladimir Malenkikh and Nikolai Zavarukhin scored for Metallurg, and
Dan Fritsche scored and
Chris Drury scored twice for the Rangers. As a sign of respect, Russian
Dmitri Kalinin and Ukrainian
Nikolay Zherdev accepted the Victoria Cup trophy on behalf of the New York Rangers.
KHL Metallurg Magnitogorsk was a founding member of the
Kontinental Hockey League and qualified to the Gagarin Cup playoffs in all of its seasons. They won the
Gagarin Cup in the
2013–14 KHL season,
2015–16 KHL season, and the
2023–24 KHL season. In the
inaugural season of the new league Metallurg played in the Tarasov Division and placed second after
HC CSKA Moscow. In the playoffs, they won bronze medals after beating
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod 3-0 and
Atlant Mytichtchi 3-1 and losing to
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl 1–4. In the
second season, the KHL divided into conferences for the first time, and Metallurg was placed into the Kharlamov Division of the Eastern Conference. They finished the regular season on top of the division and defeated
Traktor Chelyabinsk 3–1 in the first round of the playoffs, but were eliminated in the second round by the reigning champion
Ak Bars Kazan in six games.
Sergey Mozyakin had been Metallurg's star player in the KHL. He played in Magnitogorsk between 2011 and 2021. His number 10 has been retired by the club. He holds the all-time goalscoring record in the KHL with 351 goals and held the points record with 928 points until it was beaten by
Vadim Shipachyov in 2024. In the
2016-17 KHL season he set records for most points (85, beaten by Nikita Gusev in 2023-24) and most goals (48, beaten by Joshua Leivo in 2024-25) in a KHL regular season. After the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine,
Juho Olkinuora elected to leave the team. ==Season-by-season record==