Goal rush at Dynamo

Monday’s solitary warm-up action had enough thrills for a full program. Dynamo battled back from 3-6 down to tie its game against Torpedo, but lost out in a shoot-out.

Dynamo Moscow 6 Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod 7 SO (2-3, 1-3, 3-0, 0-0, 0-1)

Torpedo’s new head coach Igor Larionov promised fans that his team would not be interesting in grinding out 1-0 victories. On today’s evidence, that’s no empty statement. Both sides can point to plenty of positives on offense but may well have concerns about their defensive systems after a roller-coaster affair.

It didn’t take long to get warmed up in this one. Jakob Lilja opened the scoring after 73 seconds. That’s two goals in two games for Dynamo’s summer signing, and an assist from Eric O’Dell suggests that the Blue-and-White first line is coming together nicely.

The same cannot be said of the Dynamo blue line, though. Three defensive errors enabled Torpedo to end the first period with the lead: Yu Sato, Andrei Belevich and Denis Vengryzhanovsky took advantage of the Muscovites’ generosity, while Ilya Kablukov pulled one back for the host on the power play.

The scoring continued in the second period, with Torpedo jumping to a 6-2 lead on goals from Sergei Goncharuk, a second from Vengryzhanovsky and Kirill Urakov. It all added up to a long road back for Dynamo, but the home team began its recovery late in the frame thanks to Bogdan Trineyev. Then the Lilja – O’Dell combination clicked once more at the start of the third, Ivan Igumnov converted a penalty shot to make it a one-goal game and Vladislav Mikhailov tied it up in the 54^th minute.

Torpedo managed to halt that momentum swing and even had a chance to win it in overtime after getting on the power play during the extras. That opportunity came to naught, but the shoot-out went decisively in the visitor’s favor with Igor Larionov Jr claiming the winner.