Goaltending heroics

24 minutes from the record
Atlant goaltender Konstantin Barulin’s shutout today was his sixth already this campaign, and if he can extend his unbeaten spell by a little over 24 minutes he will overtake the record for the season of 195 minutes, belonging to Mikhail Biryukov. Konstantin can already celebrate setting a new personal record, having surpassed his previous best of 142 minutes 19 seconds, which he set last year while in the colors of CSKA.

Vyukhin’s best ever start
Goalie Alexander Vyukhin (pictured) is at his third team in the Kontinental Hockey League; after spells with Severstal and Metallurg Novokuznetsk he had his first outing today for Lokomotiv, and it is the first time he has kept a clean sheet on his club debut. For Severstal he had a perfect game in his fourth appearance, but he did not manage a single shutout in all his time at Metallurg. The last time Vyukhin kept the opposition off the scoreboard was back on the 23rd of September 2008, when he helped Severstal frustrate Torpedo.

Fourth and Fifteenth
Lokomotiv players celebrated their fourth shutout victory of the season today, matching the club’s total for the whole of the first KHL championship. The club record was set last season, when the men from Yaroslavl enjoyed six games without allowing a single goal. For Vityaz, in contrast, today’s defeat was the 15^th time in the KHL that the team has failed to score.

Figure of the day
9. That is the number of successive games in which Atlant’s Sergei Mozyakin has scored at least one goal, and it is a new KHL record. Sergei’s previous best scoring run came last season and stretched to 5 games, whereas earlier in the current campaign he suffered his longest ever dry spell – 6 games without a goal.

Key players
Vasily Koshechkin (Severstal). Saved 28 shots, bringing his team a hard-fought win on the road.

Timmy Pettersson (Severstal). Spent under 15 minutes on the ice, but still managed to score a goal and finish at a +1.

Alexei Vasilyev (Lokomotiv). Struck the winning goal and earned a +2.

Jori Lehtera (Lokomotiv). Scored one goal, supplied the passes for two more, and merited a rating of +3.

Alexander Nesterov (Atlant). Threatened the opposition’s goal five times and scored the game-winner.

Fedor Fedorov (Atlant). Only needed a little over 6 minutes to score a double – already his second for his new club.

Quotes of the day
“I’m always telling them that they must play well in every game, without keeping one eye on the play-offs,” Atlant head coach Milos Riha.

“We played our worst game of the current championship,” Dynamo Moscow head coach Oleg Znarok.

Alexei Shevchenko, special to khl.ru