SKA marches into Western semi finals. March 8 playoffs
SKA booked its place in the Western semi-finals after twice coming from behind to defeat Dinamo Minsk. The Army Men completed a sweep to join CSKA and Spartak in the next round, with only the Dynamo Moscow – Severstal pairing still alive.
Dinamo Minsk 2 SKA St. Petersburg 4 (0-0, 1-1, 1-3)
(SKA wins the series 4-0)
With a chance to wrap up the series today, SKA made a lively start to the game. However, after surviving that early pressue, Dinamo began to come into contention. Indeed, the home team thought it had the all-important opening goal in the eighth minute when Nikita Pyshkailo deflected a Malte Stromwall shot into Lars Johansson’s net. However, a video review found that the Minsk forward used his hand to steer the puck past the goalie and the play was whistled off.
It wasn’t until midway through the second period that the Belarusians got a legitimate goal and Stromwall was involved again. The former SKA man smashed home a one-timer from Adam Almquist’s feed to claim a power play goal, his second of the series. However, a power play for SKA saw Andrei Kuzmenko tie the scores when he converted the rebound from an Anton Burdasov shot. That was Kuzmenko’s fifth goal and seventh point of the series so far.
The pattern of power play goals continued in the third period. Dinamo regained the lead early on when Stromwall fed Almquist on the blue line and the Swedish defenseman unleashed a powerful effort past Johansson. But SKA responded soon afterwards with Kuzmenko involved again. This time, he fired the puck to the far post where Nikita Gusev was waiting to steer it goalwards. That’s Gusev’s third goal of the series and, like Kuzmenko, he is up to eight points for the playoffs.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, neither player was involved as SKA took the lead for the first time in the game. Instead it was Marat Khusnutdinov who struck on 50:47. Emil Galimov’s rush down the right-hand channel stretched the Minsk defense and his feed found Khusnutdinov in front of the net to finish the move and make it 3-2. That was the teenager’s first playoff goal and it proved to be a gamebreaker. Moments later, Artyom Shvets-Rogovoi extended SKA’s lead and the game was as good as settled.
Any hopes of a home fightback disappeared into the penalty box with Almquist and then Dmitry Korobov as Dinamo played much of the closing stages on the PK. Back at full strength, Stromwall potted his second of the game to give SKA an uncomfortable last 30 seconds. However, that was the last significant contribution of both game and series: Petersburg continues, Minsk bows out.
