Amur’s heartache

The battle of the season’s surprise packets went the way of Traktor Chelyabinsk, with a 3-1 win at home to Amur Khabarovsk. The hosts did well to squeeze out Amur’s offense early on, limiting the visitors to just four shots in a cagey first period which ended goalless. After the interval Traktor edged in front, with Konstantin Panov (29:05) and Deron Quint (32:12) on the mark before Stanislav Chistov made it 3-0 on 36:15. With leading scorers Jakub Petruzalek and Petr Vrana silenced, it was Vitaly Shulakov who got Amur’s consolation on 45:15.

SKA crushes Lev
Experience told in Slovakia as SKA St. Petersburg consolidated its position on top of the Western Conference with a 4-0 win over Lev Poprad - eventually. It took 37 minutes for the deadlock to be broken, but two goals late in the second period from Tony Martensson and Mattias Weinhandl gave the visitors a decisive advantage. Patrick Thoresen and Viktor Tikhonov completed the scoring the last five minutes of the game; Jakub Stepanek made 26 saves, 11 of them in a first period when the hosts dominated the game.

In defense of Dynamo
After conceding nine in its past two games, Dynamo needed a defensive boost and got just that from a 2-0 win over Moscow rivals CSKA. Alexander Yeryomenko did the honors between the piping, making 28 saves in the capital’s big game. The goals came at opposite ends of the encounter: Maxim Solovyov struck on 5:22 and fellow defender Janne Jalasvaara made it 2-0 on 59:25.

First success
Andrei Shayanov recorded his first win as head coach of Barys Astana as the Kazakhs shot down Metallurg Novokuznetsk 3-1. Brendon Bochenski wasted no time adding to his two goals against Amur on Tuesday, opening the scoring after just 23 seconds. Metallurg leveled it on 13:30 through Alexei Medvedev, but Kevin Dallman reinstated Barys’ lead on 49:38 before Bochenski wrapped it up with his second of the game on 53:48.

Around the league
It took 26 penalty shots before Matt Ellison gave Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod a home win over Dinamo Riga, following a 2-2 draw in regulation time. The Latvians had led twice through Fredrick Warg and Ainars Podzins, but Ruslan Zainullin and Martin Thornberg pegged them back - the latter scoring on a 6v5 rush with 28 seconds left to play.

Goals from Jori Lehtera and Anton Malyshev eased Sibir to a 2-0 win at struggling Avtomobilist.