Pre-season starts with Admiral loss

The first pre-season game of 2024-2025 took place in Belarus, with Admiral sending out a roster primarily comprised of triallists in a game against Dynamo St. Petersburg, which lost in the first round of last season’s VHL playoffs.

Admiral Vladivostok 0 Dynamo St. Petersburg 3 (0-1, 0-2, 0-0)

It was an experimental roster from Leonids Tambijevs and, of course, featured none of the Sailors’ imports or leading Russian players. Monday’s team was made up of players on two-way or try-out contracts. Previously, most were seen primarily in the VHL. That said, it did include players who were on the books of big clubs such as SKA (Denis Orlovich-Grudkov), Ak Bars (Kamil Fazylzyanov) and Salavat Yulaev (Alexander Skorenov). In addition, goalie Andrei Mishurov, 22, played 29 games last season for Avangard while Belarusian defenseman Evgeny Oksentyuk scored heavily in Arlan’s Kazakhstan championship winning campaign.

Dynamo, similarly, iced a team of players with some KHL experience who had not so far been able to establish themselves in Russia’s top league. Admiral ran into trouble in the first period when goalie Mishurov took a penalty and Nikita Buruyanov – once of Dynamo Moscow – opened the scoring on the power play. After that, Admiral upped the pace and Orlovich-Grudkov was close to tying the game. Semyon Pankratov and Ivan Muranov, a World Junior bronze medallist in 2019, also went close but Dynamo held its lead to the intermission.

Early in the second period, Petersburg took control of the game with a couple of quick goals. First, Nikolai Averin doubled the advantage, then Pyotr Yakovlev made the most of a misplaced pass, skating clear to beat Mishurov as the teams played four-on-four hockey. Subsequent Admiral pressure forced back-to-back power plays, but there was no way back into the game.

That pattern continued in the third: Dynamo picked up penalties, but Admiral could not find a way past goalie Rostislav Glushchenko. Even when the puck got away from him, it wouldn’t drop for the Sailors: Skorikov could not make decisive contact in front of an unguarded net as Dynamo secured a shut-out verdict.