In the 1955–56 season, the team had a chance to represent the city in the Soviet Championship, joining its then-second level Class B league and recruiting the best hockey players from Omsk.
Playing under its new name, the Omsk team reached 13th place overall, its highest success during the original four-season run in the top level of Soviet hockey.
The next season was notable for being the first in the second level league after a seven years break, as well as the first to be played on artificial ice, although the games were still held at an outdoor stadium.
In 1990, after 27 years of balancing between the second and the third divisions of Soviet hockey, Avangard was finally given the opportunity to play in the qualification tournament for the top league.
Even though Omsk players were not successful at the time, the team was ultimately promoted to the top league after the 1991 series and joined the first and the last CIS championship.
After a lacklustre 1993–94 season, Avangard repeated that success in 1995 becoming second in the East and returning to the quarterfinals, where it was eventually defeated by that year's champions, Dynamo Moscow.
During the next season, the first in the newly established Superleague of the Russian Championship, Avangard was joined by forward Maxim Sushinsky, the most successful player of the upcoming era in the club's history.
In the 1998–99 season, the newly refreshed Avangard launched a rebranding campaign under the Omskie Yastreby (Омские Ястребы, Omsk Hawks) banner, changing the logo to the present design and the team colours to black and red.
Omsk ended up fourth in the regular championship tying with Dynamo Moscow and became third in the league by attendance, but yet again could not progress past the semifinals after a 2–1 series defeat to Torpedo Yaroslavl.
In 1999, Golubovich's team also reached third in the IIHF Continental Cup, the second-level pan-European ice hockey club tournament, tying in points with that year's champions HC Ambrì-Piotta of Switzerland.
In the course of the 1999–2000 season, the club opted to switch coaches in favour of Gennady Tsygurov, who came to rebuild the team, turning to a young generation of local Omsk players, including future talents such as Alexander Svitov and Egor Shastin.
Prior to the 2001–02 season, they signed 2000 World Championship MVP Martin Procházka and in 2002, he was joined by two more Czech national team players—Pavel Patera and Tomáš Vlasák.
Metallurg Magnitogorsk, Sibir Novosibirsk, Salavat Yulaev Ufa, Ak Bars Kazan and, to a lesser extent, Vityaz Chekhov, are considered to be Avangard's fiercest rivals in the KHL.
During the summer, Anatoly Bardin, Omsk's general manager, was kept busy bringing 18 new players in, including former Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Jaromír Jágr, goaltender John Grahame and forward Stanislav Chistov.
On December 29, 2008, Russian investigators revealed that he suffered from myocarditis, a condition where not enough blood reaches the heart, and that he should not have been playing hockey professionally.
This resulted in a bizarre incident when Anatoly Bardin asked Wayne Fleming to leave the bench during the second intermission of a home game against Vityaz Chekhov.
The club made a few solid roster additions by signing Karri Rämö with Lasse Kukkonen in the summer and Anton Babchuk with Denis Kulyash during the season.
[12] The new head coach failed to deliver as the team suffered three-straight defeats at the hands of Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk and was eliminated in the first round.
In 2009, Gazprom Neft started partnership cooperation with Avangard hockey club, which includes support and development of youth and children teams.