Three goals is no guarantee
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl became the second team of the season to somehow contrive to lose a game despite having scored the first three goals, following in the footsteps of Avtomobilist, for whom not even a 4-0 lead was enough to guarantee victory against Amur in Khabarovsk.
If we look back further than the current season, we find that wasting a three-goal lead is nothing new for Lokomotiv - last year they collapsed in identical fashion against Salavat Yulaev. For Sibir, it was the first they have achieved such a successful comeback in all their time in the KHL. The best club in the League on this score is Dinamo Riga, who last year brushed aside a 0-3 deficit to win on three occasions.
Unbeaten in goal
Atlant goaltender Konstantin Barulin now occupies fifth place among his fellow keepers for the longest unbeaten spell between the pipes. It is now 123 minutes and 6 seconds since anyone managed to score past Barulin, and he needs to keep frustrating the opposition for 58 more minutes in order to match this season’s record, set by Steve Valiquette of CSKA.
Interestingly, in third place is Barulin’s comrade at Mytishchi, Vitaly Koval, who went 127 minutes and 58 seconds without conceding. CSKA also boasts two goalies in the top five, with Valiquette joined by Sergei Gayduchenko.
As for current unbeaten spells, Barulin’s closest rival is Salavat Yulaev’s Vitaly Kolesnik, who has gone 52 minutes and 7 seconds without allowing a goal.
Scoring while outnumbered
Mark Bomersback’s short-handed goal against Torpedo was the first by any Novokuznetsk Metallurg player this season, and only the sixth in the club’s KHL history. The leaders in the current championship on this score are Amur’s Igor Ignatushkin and Dinamo Riga’s Tomas Surovy, with two short-handed goals apiece.
Figure of the day
With today’s triumph over Amur, Atlant also enjoyed their 16th shutout of their time in the KHL. Five of these were thanks to Vitaly Kolesnik and three were earned by Konstantin Barulin. Ray Emery, Martin Gerber and Jan Lasak all added two clean sheets, and there was one each from Vitaly Koval and Andrei Gavrilov.
Key players
Konstantin Barulin (Atlant). Not his busiest game – 18 shots saved, but a shutout is a shutout nonetheless.
Evgeny Korolev (Torpedo). His pass set up the golden goal in overtime.
Alexander Guskov (Lokomotiv). Spent over 30 minutes on the ice, scored a goal and made an assist.
Sergei Mozyakin (Atlant). In 19½ minutes’ playing time he had four shots on target, and one of these was the game-winner.
Alexander Boykov (Sibir). Scored a double.
Jonas Enlund (Sibir). Added a goal and an assist to his account.
Quotes of the day
“I want to apologize to our fans, today it was by far our worst game,” Amur head coach Sergei Svetlov.
“On the whole, we controlled the game, but we were haunted by the same kind of crazy, dumb mistakes that we made in Magnitogorsk,” Torpedo head coach Vladimir Golubovich.
“For some reason our team decided not to start playing until the score was already 0-3, but credit to them for not giving up, for believing they could still save the game,” Sibir head coach Andrei Tarasenko.
Alexei Shevchenko, special to khl.ru
