Sailors battle back to sink Vityaz

A big fightback from Admiral saw a 1-4 deficit turn into a 7-4 victory. Friday’s clash was the first warm-up game between two KHL teams this summer.

Vityaz Moscow Region 4 Admiral Vladivostok 7 (4-1, 0-3, 0-3)

For Admiral, this was the third pre-season game. However, it was the first time Leonids Tambijevs could use a full-strength team. Previously, the Sailors faced Dynamo St. Petersburg and Metallurg Zhlobin with an experimental roster of triallists and players on two-way contracts.

That meant today saw imports Libor Sulak, Mario Grman, Giovanni Fiore, Austin Ortega and Jack Rodewald in action. For Ortega, Rodewald and Grman this was their first game in Admiral colors.

Vityaz, meanwhile, was playing its first game of the summer. New head coach Pavel Desyatkov, who is preparing for his debut season behind the bench in the KHL after spending last season as assistant to Valery Bragin at Lada, was not able to use his imports on Friday and selected an entirely Russian roster for the meeting in Minsk.

At first, things went well for Desyatkov’s team. Vityaz jumped into a 2-0 lead on goals from Ivan Vorobyov and Yegor Zubov. Admiral pulled one back right away thanks to Ivan Muranov, but Vasily Demchenko was beaten twice more in the opening stanza with Vorobyov scoring his second of the game.

But Admiral hit back to tie the game in the second period. Vladimir Mikhasyonok, one of the more impressive players in the Sailors’ earlier engagements, pulled one back in the 25th minute. Then the imports got to work, with Rodewald and Fiore on target to make it 4-4 at the second intermission.

Rodewald got his second of the night midway through the third, putting Admiral up for the first time in the game. That proved to be the winner. Grman’s point shot was redirected home by Pavel Shen to make it 6-4 and Stepan Starkov completed the scoring with an empty-netter.