Avangard Omsk 3
Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg 0

Thursday’s only KHL game saw Avangard return to the top of the Eastern Conference on the back of Dominik Furch’s seventh shut-out of the season. The Omsk team is level on points with Sibir, but holds top spot by virtue of more victories this season.

Avtomobilist, meanwhile, continues to stutter: this defeat was its eighth in 10 games in the KHL, with only a run to Spengler Cup semi-finals to brighten the picture for the Ural team.

The damage here was done in the first period. Andrei Pervyshin opened the scoring midway though on the power play and Denis Parshin added a second just before the hooter. The game remained at 2-0 until the last moments when Alexander Perezhogin found the empty net to pile on the misery for Avto. Furch made 25 saves for his shut-out.