Zernov treble sinks Barys. March 7 playoffs
Metallurg is on the brink of progressing after Denis Zernov’s hat-trick powered a 5-2 win in Kazakhstan.
Barys Nur-Sultan 2 Metallurg Magnitogorsk 5 (1-2, 1-3, 0-0)
(Metallurg leads the series 3-1)
A hat-trick from Denis Zernov – the first in this year’s playoffs – led Metallurg to a second big win on the road in Kazakhstan. Victory puts the Steelmen one step away from securing a place in the Eastern Conference semi-finals and Ilya Vorobyov’s team can finish the job on Wednesday when the teams return to Magnitogorsk for game five.
Vorobyov ignored the maxim about never changing a winning team and made a couple of adjustments to his roster here. Back came Anatoly Nikontsev, while Yaroslav Khabarov joined the defense for the first time in this year’s playoffs. They replaced Yegor Korobkin and Artyom Zemchyonok respectively.
When the teams met on Saturday, Barys found itself in trouble right away when it gave up a shorthanded goal in the third minute. Today, the home team was a man down after 47 seconds and never really managed to wrest the initiative back from Metallurg. True, that early power play came to naught, but the early action continued to be around the home net. Zernov had already seen Joni Ortio deny him once before he opened the scoring in the sixth minute. Grigory Dronov’s stretch pass was flicked on by Maxim Karpov at the blue line, and that touch sprang the Barys defense, enabling Zernov to advance and shoot past the Finnish goalie.
Midway through the first period, Zernov got his second. The home defense allowed far too much space and the forward skated onto Alexei Maklyukov’s pass and delivered another emphatic finish. At that time, the shot count was 11-2 in Magnitka’s favor – stark evidence of the visitor’s dominance of the game.
It took a spot of penalty trouble to offer a lifeline to Barys. When Josh Currie sat for kneeing, Linden Vey needed just 18 seconds to halve the deficit. Soon after, a too many men call had Magnitka back on the PK but there was no further scoring before the intermission.
The teams started the middle frame playing four-on-four and Zernov quickly potted his third of the game, pouncing on the rebound after Ortio gloved away a shot from Karpov. Barely a minute later, Dronov added a fourth after Brendan Leipsic pulled the home defense out of position and the game was drifting out of Barys’ grasp. For Dronov, that’s three goals in three games; playoff hockey clearly suits the blue liner.
Late in the second, the teams traded goals. Linus Videll got his second of the playoffs, breezing past Roman Savchenko on his way to a successful meeting with Ortio before Jacob Berglund got a consolation tally for the home team.
In the previous game, Barys managed something of a fightback in the third period, turning a hopeless 0-5 deficit into a respectable 3-5 loss. Today, though, there was no repeat. Even an 80-second passage of five-on-three power play could not help the home team as Metallurg closed out the game with something to spare.
