Triple Art

SKA St. Petersburg extended its lead at the top of the KHL table with a convincing 4-1 home win over Atlant Moscow Region, rounding off 2011 in style against last year’s silver medalists. It was a particularly memorable night for Evgeny Artyukhin, who hit a hat-trick against a team hoping to sneak into second place in the Western Conference with the right result in Petersburg. Artyukhin struck twice in the opening minutes as SKA raced into a 2-0 lead by 5:31, and completed the scoring on 37:23. Fyodor Fedorov - who played for Atlant last season before following head coach Milos Riha to SKA - had two assists and Igor Makarov was the other SKA goalscorer.