SKA sunk at home again. November 12 round-up

SKA suffered a second successive home defeat, going down 3-1 to Dynamo Moscow. It was the Blue-and-Whites’ second victory over the Army Men this season and served as another reminder to SKA that impressive early season form offers no guarantees of sustained success against the league’s strongest teams. Dynamo’s 4-1 victory, hard on the heels of Metallurg Magnitogorsk’s recent triumph here, served as a wake-up call for Vyacheslav Bykov after a season where his team has dealt confidently with the competition’s underdogs but has sometimes looked vulnerable against other Gagarin Cup pretenders. The first period was scoreless but it didn’t take long for the second to roar into life. Dynamo’s Konstantin Gorovikov was fouled by Andrei Kuteikin just 34 seconds after the restart and the forward calmly converted his penalty shot. Exactly a minute later defenseman Andrei Mironov thumped a slap shot past the screened Evgeny Ivannikov to put Dynamo 2-0 up and send SKA scurrying for a time out. V ...