Avangard thumps SKA, Lada surprises Ak Bars

There was a busy day of pre-season action on Saturday. In Sochi, Admiral and Avangard enjoyed wins in the annual Hockey Open tournament. Elsewhere, there was success in sparring sessions for Lada, Lokomotiv and Amur, while a young Metallurg side lost in overtime to Team Belarus.

Sochi Hockey Open

Russia U23 1 Admiral Vladivostok 2 (1-1, 0-1, 0-0)

Admiral handed debuts to its new imports, Tyler Graovac and Giovanni Fiore, in its second game of the tournament. The coaching staff put them together on the third line to introduce them to the Sailors’ style.

And that pair combined for the winning goal, with former Eisbaren Berlin man Fiore supplying an assist as Graovac made it 2-1 early in the second period. Not a bad start for two players who only joined the camp this week in Sochi.

That goal snapped a 1-1 tie. Alexander Shevchenko put Admiral up in the first period after Russia’s youngsters made a mess of their power play. Later, though, the national team tied it up when Semyon Sinyatkin converted a 5-on-3 chance.

After Admiral got in front, goalie Nikita Serebryakov came up with two big stops to deny a couple of three-on-one rushes from team Russia. He remained busy until the end of the game, with Admiral regularly visiting the penalty box. However, the national team could not take advantage and the Sailors secured a second victory in Sochi.

Leonids Tambijevs, Admiral head coach
I’m happy with the result. I’m happy with our five-on-five game, we did a lot of good things well. But we took so many penalties ... At least we got some useful practice on the PK. I wasn’t too happy with the second period, we allowed too many counterattacks and we need to be better on that. But overall I was happy. The team was consistent, we looked more or less organized. Graovac and Fiore were OK. Neither of them are in the best shape, they only joined us here in Sochi. But I can already see that they are real men – in battles, on the draw, they go there and win. That’s important in the KHL and I hope they will help us this season.

SKA St. Petersburg 1 Avangard Omsk 5 (1-2, 0-2, 0-1)

Avangard enjoyed an emphatic win over SKA, despite the absence of several key players. Reid Boucher, for example, a leading forward for the Hawks, watched from the sidelines after joining the team in Sochi this week. And, as head coach Mikhail Kravets said, Avangard is looking at its youngsters in this competition, with a view to icing something closer to the first team at its home tournament later in the month.

SKA, meanwhile, played Brendan Leipsic for the first time, putting him into the top line in place of former Avangard manArseny Gritsyuk. The young Russian joined Matvei Michkov and Ivan Demidov on the second line and set up his team’s only goal of the game, scored by Michkov.

By then, though, Avangard was already on top. The Hawks made a bright start, and 19-year-old Ilya Reingardt – 20 points in 20 Junior Hockey League games last season – highlighted his potential with assists on markers from Nikita Mikhailov and Denis Vengryzhanovsky. Michkov pulled one back for SKA, but could not change the course of the game.

In the second period, defenseman Artyom Murylyov came to the fore. He had a goal and an assist from the third line, with Kirill Panyukov claiming the fourth goal. In the final stanza, Reingardt completed a hat-trick of helpers when he sent Pavel Kulikov away on a successful breakaway.

Mikhail Kravets, Avangard head coach      
It’s just one game in a summer tournament. Today, everything went for us. We asked the guys not to repeat yesterday’s mistakes, we looked at a lot of video, we talked and explained. Today we saw better skating, more compact movement. There was more fight, the right attitude. We hardly made a major mistake. Plus our goalie, Vasily Demchenko. That all added up to the result. In the previous game we had 38 shots. That’s great, but we need more quality. Today, we had that quality.

Warm-up games

Team Belarus 5 Metallurg Magnitogorsk 4 OT (1-1, 2-1, 1-2, 1-0)

Metallurg’s first pre-season game involved something resembling a junior roster. The most experienced players were defensive duo Valery Orekhov (261 KHL games) and Makar Khabarov (229), although both players are in their early 20s and hardly qualify as veterans. They formed part of the starting quintet, alongside Danila Yurov, Roman Kantserov and Nikita Grebyonkin, back from a successful loan spell at Amur last season.

The first period was dominated by penalty calls. Belarus killed a 3-on-5 situation, then scored a power play goal at the other end through Vladislav Kodola. Magnitka’s response, also on the PP, came from young Mikhail Grass, a 19-year-old still awaiting his KHL debut.

Kodola began the second period with his second goal of the game, but it took just 41 seconds for Maxim Kuznetsov to tie it up. However, when Yegor Borikov made it 3-2 to the home team, Metallurg could not find a rapid response and the session ended with Belarus in front.

The third tying goal went to another youngster, Ivan Kurin, and Grass got his second of the game late on to cancel out Timofei Kovgorenya’s effort for Belarus. That meant overtime, and Roman Gorbunov scored on Alexander Smolin for the fifth team to give Belarus the verdict.

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl 3 Severstal Cherepovets 2 (2-0, 0-0, 1-2)

Loko defeated Severstal for the second time in a week. This time, though, the game was played in a traditional 60-minute format, rather than the four-period meeting we saw earlier.

The home team again looked to test its depth. Igor Nikitin named goalies Sergei Murashov and Maxim Mayorov, who have just one KHL game between them. We also saw Nikita Kiryanov, Alexander Perevalov, Alexander Volkov and 1^st-round draft pick Dmitry Simashev in action.

The first period was all about Lokomotiv. Konstantin Shostak was busy from the start in the Severstal net, with the first shift bringing two testers from Maxim Shalunov. His line went on to open the scoring with defenseman Andrei Sergeyev firing home from the point. A power play goal from Yaroslav Likhachyov doubled the home lead.

The middle frame saw Loko continue to dominate as Severstal ran into penalty trouble. However, there was no further scoring until the third period. Shalunov then added a third goal, this time on Dmitry Shugayev, which seemed to put the game out of reach. However, when Yaroslavl started picking up penalties, Severstal spotted a lifeline. Yegor Stepanov and Alexander Skorenov made it a one-goal game, but Andrei Kozyrev’s team could not find an equalizer.

Ak Bars Kazan 2 Lada Togliatti 3 (2-1, 0-2, 0-0)

Lada served notice that it is capable of competing in this season’s KHL with an impressive win against Ak Bars. While it’s true that the Kazan team was playing its second game in two days, following Friday’s 5-0 win over Neftyanik, it’s also true that Zinetula Bilyaletdinov iced another strong roster.

Ak Bars was good enough to grab an early lead through Maxim Bykov. The 21-year-old had some KHL action last season, and today he replaced Alexander Radulov. Bykov opened the scoring after 85 seconds with assists from Ilya Safonov and Damir Zhafyarov.

Late in the first period, Lada tied it up when Mikhail Fisenko scored on the power play, but Ak Bars took a lead into the locker room after Stanislav Galiyev replied with a PP tally of his own. In the middle frame, though, the Motormen turned the score around. Nikita Anokhovsky tied the scores for a second time, then a power play effort from Yegor Babenko proved sufficient to decide the game.

Amur Khabarovsk 3 Khimik Voskresensk 2 SO (0-1, 2-1, 0-0, 0-0, 1-0)

Andrei Martemyanov’s first game back behind the Amur bench saw the Tigers take on VHL Champion Khimik. The Voskresensk team is coached by Igor Grishin, who had a spell in charge of Spartak last season before returning to the Red-and-Whites’ farm club.

Today, Grishin’s team twice led. However, second-period goals from Alex Broadhurst – newly arrived from Avangard – and Stanislav Bocharov, who remains at Amur after joining partway through last season, ensured that the game finished tied at 2-2.

Overtime was goalless, but Amur came out on top in the shoot-out to take a narrow victory in its first pre-season game.