Playoff preview: SKA – Dinamo Minsk
Before the start of the playoffs, KHL.ru presents a preview of the Gagarin Cup’s first-round pairings. Today the talk is about the clash between SKA and Dinamo Minsk, the first and eighth seeds in the West.
There will be a new round of playoff contention between SKA and Dynamo Minsk on March 2. Last season the teams also met in the first round and the victory went to the Army team 4:1 in the series. However, despite the score, the series was tight. All games ended with the teams separated by no more than two goals, and two games ended outside of regulation. In the 2021-2022 season, the history of face-to-face meetings was complemented by two more games – both times SKA prevailed with a 2:1 score. They won at home in regulation time, on the road in OT.
Throughout the season, SKA was consistently among the top three in the West, and as the New Year came closer, St. Petersburg took over the conference lead. SKA has the West’s second most prolific scoring offense (146 goals) and scored 70.8% of its points – no other team in the conference passed the 70% threshold. One of the highlights of the season for SKA was the appointment of Roman Rotenberg as the club’s head coach in early January. With Rotenberg at the helm, SKA had three wins and one loss in official games.
Minsk had a strong start to the regular season, but then roster problems intervened – injuries and illnesses took their toll on the team led by Craig Woodcroft. Dinamo lost momentum and dropped to the bottom of the top eight. By the end of the regular season, however, the team was able to return to a near-optimal lineup and play a series of games showing that it could once again put up a fight against any opponent.
During the Olympic break, players from both teams were involved in friendly games. SKA, for example, won the Sochi Winter Cup tournament in Sochi and also took part in some friendlies there. The Bisons defeated Shakter Soligorsk on Feb 21 (5:1), and will meet Salavat Yulaev on Feb 23. Earlier, a number of players of the team as part of the Belarusian team took part in test games against Metallurg Magnitogorsk.
SKA’s lineup features Andrei Kuzmenko, the second leading scorer of the current KHL season. In 45 regular-season games he scored 53 (20+33) points and posted a plus-15 differential. Another big-caliber weapon in the SKA’s arsenal is forward Anton Burdasov. He tallied 23 goals in 41 games, which allowed him to break into the top 5 snipers of the championship and to repeat his own record set last season. By the way – in last year’s series between SKA and Dinamo Minsk, Burdasov scored one game-winning goal and two assists.
We should also pay attention to newly minted Olympic champion Mikko Lehtonen who averages 27:04 on the ice. That’s the best result among all the team’s skaters. The defenseman missed almost two months due to injury, so he didn’t score that many points (1+7), but don’t let that mislead anyone. Lehtonen is a very dangerous defenseman who can be very useful for the team in even strength and especially on the power play.
Minsk, on the other hand, can, in good conscience, count on their international players. Dinamo has a very strong Swedish legion. It includes, for example, two of Dinamo’s most productive blueliners this season, Adam Almqvist (3+23 points in 41 games) and Lukas Bengtsson (4+15 in 42 games), as well as forwards Malte Stromwall and Mattias Tedenby. They both scored 32 points (19+13 and 13+19, respectively) and are among the team’s top 3 scorers. Stromwall is the team’s top sniper this season, but the top scorer is Canadian Taylor Beck, who produced 38 (8+30) points in 42 games.
But the roster doesn’t feature international players only. There’s no shortage of local talent, such as Ilya Usov. The 20-year-old forward played against SKA in the playoffs last year, and this season he’s doing very well with 9+17 points and a plus-9 rating in 40 games.
It’s also impossible to ignore the team’s captain, Dmitri Korobov. If only because he had one of the most memorable goals of the 2021-2022 season under his belt.
Both teams have truly stellar goalies. The best goalie in the KHL in several aspects is Lars Johansson (93.2%, 1.63 GAA, 9 SO), and he and Patrik Rybar (90.4%, 2.78, 1 SO) participated in the Beijing Olympics. Moreover, at the Games we saw a kind of rehearsal for the first round of the playoffs in the bronze medal game, where SKA’s Johansson backstopped the Tre Kronor, and Rybar played on the last line for Team Slovakia. The Slovakian came out as the winner, even managing to shutout the opposition in the process. However, other goalies shouldn’t be ignored either. For example, over the course of the season, 20-year-old Alexei Kolosov won eleven games for Minsk.
Interestingly, both SKA and Dinamo Minsk have been outstanding on the road this season – the St. Petersburg franchise tops the league in points scored on the road (36 in 24 games), while the Bisons are just a couple of points behind (32 in 27) and is in the bottom five. The teams are next to each other in one more component – powerplay. SKA has the sixth best figures in the League (22.2%), while Minsk is in eighth place (21.8%). In terms of penalty killing, however, SKA has a convincingly 83.7% against 75.4% – only Kunlun is worse than Dinamo this season.
What will be the debut playoff run for Roman Rotenberg as SKA’s head coach? Can Dinamo Minsk get revenge for last year’s first-round exit? We’ll find out soon!
The series SKA – Dinamo Minsk plays on Mar 2, 4, 6, 8 and, if necessary, on Mar 10, 12, and 14.
