SKA slips at last

SKA St. Petersburg dropped points for the first time this season after losing on penalties at home to Dinamo Minsk. A stirring fightback from the visitors forced a 3-3 draw in regulation time. It had seemed that two quick-fire goals from Evgeny Artyukhin (32:13) and Tony Martensson (32:50) had ended the Belarusian resistance, but the visitors took advantage of a 5v3 powerplay in the third to grab a lifeline through Geoff Platt. Then on 57:23 Zbynek Irgl fired home a dramatic equalizer, ending SKA's flawless four-game streak.

The hosts then had to endure a two-minute penalty against Artyukhin at the start of overtime before the game went to penalties. On 25 minutes Igor Makarov's penalty had been thwarted by Andrei Mezin, and that proved to be a taste of what was to come as the Minsk goalie denied Petr Pruha and Patrik Thoresen in the shoot-out, while Platt and Irgl both scored.

Three-goal blast
An astonishing 48 seconds in Nizhny Novgorod saw Torpedo and Traktor trade three goals. Deron Quint put the visitors in ahead on 24:43, only for Torpedo to equalise on 25:00 through Ilya Krikunov. The cheers had barely subsided, though, before the Chelyabinsk side went in front once more on 25:31 through Konstantin Panov. Traktor went on to record a 5-2 win thanks to youngster Evgeny Kuznetsov's goal, a shorthanded effort from Maxim Yakutsenya and Andrei Popov's empty-netter in the third period.

Easing past Avto
Last season's runner-up Atlant Moscow Region has struggled to show its best form this season, but still had an extra gear in the match at home to Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg. Alexei Glukhov was the key man, setting up Ilya Kablukov's opener before making it 2-0 on 06:52