Avangard opens with OT victory. March 17 playoffs
Arseny Gritsyuk pounced in overtime to score the winning goal and give Avangard the early edge in this Eastern Conference second round series.
Avangard Omsk 2 Metallurg Magnitogorsk 1 OT (1-0, 0-1, 0-0, 1-0)
(Avangard leads the series 1-0)
Between them, Avangard and Metallurg have reached seven Gagarin Cup finals and won three of them. Indeed, since 2016, only one final series did not feature one of these teams. Today, though, these two Eastern powerhouses met in the opening game of this second-round series.
In the first round, Avangard lost its opening game against Sibir but then reeled off four successive wins to advance in five. Metallurg, meanwhile, had a tougher time against Avtomobilist before advancing thanks to an overtime win in game seven.
Maybe that’s why the home team seemed fresher in the opening frame. Avangard had the better of the opening exchanges, enjoying greater territorial advantage and outshooting Magnitka 14-6. The visiting offense was limited to a couple of opportunities carved out by the Philippe Maillet-Brendan Leipsic pairing, while the Hawks enjoyed more variety in their offensive options. That all contributed to the only goal of the first period, scored by Reid Boucher midway through. Ziyat Paigin fired in a point shot, Corban Knight battled to keep the puck alive on the slot and it dropped for Boucher to shoot into the open side of the net.
Not even a Metallurg power play could get the visitor’s offense moving. Instead, Avangard was close to adding a shorthanded goal when Grigory Dronov fell behind his own net and Fyodor Malykhin found himself all alone with only Eddie Pasquale to beat. However, the forward could not get the puck past the Canadian’s pads and it remained 1-0 until the first intermission.
The second period began with chances at both ends, but gradually Metallurg began to generate more opportunities. Midway through the session, a power play saw the Steelmen tie the game. Semyon Koshelev collected a pass from Dronov and deposited a wrist shot into the top corner while Andrei Chibisov screened goalie Vasily Demchenko.
In the third, there was an early chance for Avangard when Sergei Tolchinsky stripped Leipsic of the puck and bore down on goal. However, Alexei Maklyukov was alert to the danger and prevented Tolchinsky from testing Pasquale. After that, both teams played cautious hockey and tried to force the other side into a mistake as the game moved ever closer to overtime.
Avangard almost won it in the first moments of overtime. Damir Sharipzyanov fired in the puck from the point and Boucher won possession on the slot before firing a shot that dinged the post and went to safety.
The home team continued to have the better of the play in the extras, with Metallurg limited to a single chance for Leipsic on the counterattack. Thus it was no surprise when Arseny Gritsyuk got the winner for the Hawks. He reacted fastest after a thunderbolt of a slapshot from Paigin cannoned off the post and dropped onto the slot. Gritsyuk, who came to life in last year’s playoffs with 10 points in 13 games at the climax of his rookie season, missed the first five of this post season. Today was his second goal in three games since his return.
