Russia’s top players meet in “Game of the Year”

The “Game of the Year” lived up to expectations with a hockey super-show in Moscow. Saturday’s star-studded match-up between Russia’s top NHLers and a KHL select team produced a 16-goal thriller – and plenty of thrills and spills.

Saturday’s game, which attracted a capacity 12,000+ crowd to Moscow’s CSKA Arena, brought together some of the country’s most famous sporting names. On the NHL roster, we had this summer’s Stanley Cup winning goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, plus megastars in the shape of Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeny Malkin, Artemy Panarin and Ilya Kovalchuk. Behind the bench, Igor Larionov, Nikita Zhamnov and Oleg Znarok took charge.

For Team KHL, we saw the freescoring likes of Alexander Radulov and Vadim Shipachyov, plus rising stars Ilya Nabokov, Alexander Nikishin and Vasily Atanasov. The roster was studded with Olympic medallists from Russia’s golden team of 2018 and the silver campaign of 2022. The coaching team featured SKA and Team Russia head coach Roman Rotenberg, plus Gagarin Cup finalists Andrei Razin (Metallurg) and Igor Nikitin (Lokomotiv).

A galaxy of hockey stars assembled in Moscow – and in the process raised money for charity. Nobody was paid to play, and the bulk of the profits raised from ticket sales will go to a charitable funds set up by the players themselves. The event was set up by Mikhail Sergachev’s Sektor 98 organization, and Artemy Panarin’s Arena Play. Sergachev, a two-time Stanley Cup winner, talked about how it all happened.

“It all started when I heard that Artemy was planning something cool and I wanted to get involved, to help make it as big as possible. I called Artemy and he asked that I gave Sasha [Ovechkin] a ring. Everything worked out and we started to set up the game. It’s cool to see how many of the guys got on board, supported us and turned out to play.”

Mikhail Sergachev

On the ice, there was no shortage of action in a game dedicated to attacking, creative play. It took just 25 seconds for Oveckhin to open the scoring, and despite a quick response from Anton Burdasov, the first period belonged to the NHLers.

However, after turning around down 2-6 at the first intermission, Team KHL hit back in the second. Radulov set the tone with an early goal and the fightback was complete late in the middle frame when a Pavel Poryadin penalty shot beat Pyotr Kochetkov to make it 7-7.

The third period was much tighter, as both teams realized that there was a game to win. Pavel Buchnevich converted a penalty shot to make it 8-7 to the NHL, then Panarin failed to beat Nabokov with a penalty of his own (in this exhibition game, instead of sending offenders to the box, every foul brought a penalty shot). Nikolai Goldobin tied the scores in the 52nd minute and it finished 8-8 after an exhilarating and entertaining clash.

The success of Saturday’s game already has Panarin planning more.

“I didn’t expect such widespread interest from the public, from the media. We just wanted to put on a show for the fans.

“Right now we’re thinking about today’s game. We have a year to think about where to play the next game. But it will definitely be a real hockey town.”

Artemy Panarin