De Angelo makes bright start for SKA, Avangard slump continues. September 27 round-up

Tony De Angelo made his SKA debut and the American defenseman had an instant impact. He had three assists in a crazy 8-5 win over Severstal. Avangard suffered a seventh straight loss when it fell 2-4 at Traktor, while Neftekhimik has gone five games without a win following its shoot-out stumble at Lada. Metallurg remains in a struggle to find form as well, losing 3-4 at home to Ak Bars.

In form Ak Bars adds to Metallurg’s woe

Metallurg Magnitogorsk 3 Ak Bars Kazan 4 (1-2, 0-1, 2-1)

Metallurg continued its home stand with another big rivalry. But while Ak Bars came to Magnitogorsk with a four-game winning streak, the host saw its mini revival come to a halt with a 3-4 loss at home to Spartak on Wednesday. The visitor’s hot form started with a 2-0 home win over the Steelmen and in Friday’s return fixture Anvar Gatiyatulin’s men again came out on top.

Magnitka had little luck in the first period. The host played the better hockey but could not translate that into a lead. Danila Yurov scored his second goal in two games and his second line partnership with Nikita Mikhailis and Alexander Petunin posed plenty of problems. Mikhailis was close to a second goal, with only the post denying the Kazakh forward. However, late in the frame, Ak Bars scored two quick goals. First, Yegor Babenko tied the game. Metallurg unwisely challenged the play, claiming interference on goalie Nikita Podskrebalin, but lost the appeal and suffered a delay of game penalty. The power play brought second goal after just 33 seconds as Nic Petan expertly converted Dmitrij Jaskin’s feed.

Having turned the game around, Ak Bars did not allow Metallurg to enjoy the same momentum in the second period. Keeping it simple, and keeping Magnitka away from the danger zone, the visitor frustrated for a time before Semyon Koshelev’s counterattack goal made it 3-1 and sent Podskrebalin to the bench.

Metallurg responded well. Helped by a couple of power plays, Andrei Razin’s team looked to be regaining some of the control it enjoyed in the first period, albeit with two goals to make up. Nonetheless, the next tally came in the 46th minute and, once again, it went to Ak Bars. Alexander Barabanov was the scorer after Metallurg was caught changing on the fly.

Against Spartak, Metallurg trailed 1-4 and came close to salvation. Today it was the same story. Luke Johnson brought the game back to life then, in the 49th minute, Magnitka got a five-on-three power play. Razin went for broke, playing with six skaters, and got the reward when Alexander Petunin made it 3-4. With more than 10 to play, the fightback was on. Ak Bars decided that defense was the best form of attack and dug in to close out a narrow win and got a boost when Scott Wilson took an untimely penalty, eating into the remaining minutes for a tying goal. When Wilson left the box, Razin again tried his luck with an empty net but this time the extra skater could not make the difference.

Hawks suffer seventh successive loss

Traktor Chelyabinsk 4 Avangard Omsk 2 (2-0, 2-1, 0-1)

Avangard’s problems continue. This was a seventh successive loss for Sergei Zvyagin’s team. It’s a poor run by any standards, but for a team expected to be among the Eastern leaders, this is particularly hard to take.

Traktor, meanwhile, snapped a two-game skid to move to 12 points. Benoit Groulx’s team are one of a group of four jockeying for position behind Eastern leader Avtomobilist.

The home team got off to a fine start here. Vladimir Tkachyov opened the scoring in the fifth minute and Avangard’s challenge failed, handing the Hawks a delay of game penalty. Gratefully, Traktor’s Artyom Shvaryov doubled the lead, while Andrei Svetlakov’s assist brought up his 200th KHL point.

Things didn’t improve for the visitor after the intermission. Too many penalties kept Avangard on the back foot and eventually Alexander Kadeikin punished that ill-discipline with a 32nd-minute power play goal. Four minutes later, he got his second of the game. In addition, goalie Ilya Proskuryakov denied Maxim Shabanov’s penalty shot earlier in the session.

In the final seonds, Ilya Reingardt pulled a goal back for Avangard. It was a slim hope, especially when the shot count was 33-11 in Traktor’s favor. In the final frame, the Hawks posed slightly more of an offensive threat but could not beat Zach Fucale again until the closing moments. Reingardt’s second was too little, too late.

Battling Neftekhimik falls in shoot-out

Lada Togliatti 5 Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk 4 SO (1-0, 3-2, 0-2, 0-0, 1-0)

Lada led 2-0 and 4-2 in this game, but still got dragged the full distance by a Neftekhimik team that never knew when to give up. Eventually the Motormen took a shoot-out verdict to snap a four-game skid. The Wolves fell to a fifth successive loss, but will point out that four of those were one-goal margins.

Things started well enough for the home team. Oleg Bratash’s men had the better of the first period and were good value for the lead given by Dmitry Kugryshev’s eighth-minute goal. It got better at the start of the second when Ivan Romanov doubled the lead.

Neftekhimik had offered little up to that point, but pulled a goal back through Nikita Khoruzhev. That looked like a mere consolation effort when Yegor Chernikov restored Lada’s two-goal cushion within a minute, but it proved to be the first sign of the fightback to come. Two minutes of five-on-three power play helped: midway through the second period, Vyacheslav Leshchenko’s goal made it 2-3. Again, though, back at full strength, Lada quickly extended the lead on a 34th minute effort from Rafael Bikmullin.

Things were different in the third. Now Neftekhimik’s offense looked more dangerous. The visitor was denied a third goal by a bench challenge, but then scored a quick pair around the 50-minute mark. Andrei Belozyorov got them both, first at the end of another five-on-three PP, then at equal strength less than two minutes later.

Momentum was with the Wolves, but a winner would have to wait: the game went to overtime, where another Neftekhimik power play had Lada hanging on in the closing seconds. That took us to a shoot-out, settled in the home team’s favor by Kugryshev.

DeAngelo’s debut turns into a classic

SKA St. Petersburg 8 Severstal Cherepovets 5 (5-2, 3-1, 0-2)

You’d have to hope that St. Petersburg’s Friday evening traffic wasn’t too bad tonight. Anyone arriving late at this game missed a spectacular start. The teams scored seven goals in the first period, four of them in the first nine minutes. The moral of the story: get to the arena in good time!

There was nothing sluggish about Severstal’s power play. The visitor got the first chance with the extra man on 6:21 and took the lead on 6:52 through Nikita Korostelyov. By 7:25, it was 2-1 for Severstal: Valentin Zykov tied the game, but Ruslan Abrosimov immediately restored the visitor’s lead. Nothing daunted, SKA was level again barely a minute later thanks to Mikhail Vorobyov.

It made for a breathless start to Tony De Angelo’s KHL career. The American defenseman may have appreciated three minutes of relative calm after the 2-2 tally – and soon he helped trigger another goal rush. The SKA debutant, paired with Andrei Pedan on the second pair, twice combined with his partner to set up goals for Ivan Demidov and Vladimir Alistrov. Then Marat Khairullin made it three goals in three minutes, and SKA went to the intermission up 5-2.

The De Angelo show continued after the intermission with an assist on Zykov’s second of the game. The 28-year-old came to Russia with a reputation as a productive two-way defenseman and on this evidence, that’s exactly what SKA has got. However, he was rarely highlighted as a man to dominate defensively and while the newbie was not on the ice for the first two Severstal goals, he left Kirill Pilipenko with too much room on the doorstep as the visitor got back to 3-6.

It hardly mattered in the context of tonight’s game, though. Vasily Glotov soon added a seventh, with Pedan collecting his fourth helper of the evening and Arseny Gritsyuk made it 8-3 at the second intermission.

Severstal was the last KHL team to score 10 in game when it hammered Sochi on Oct. 7, 2023. Now it faced a fight to escape being the next team to allow double figures when the third period got underway. At the other end, SKA opted to give Nikita Serebryakov the third period in net in place of Artemy Pleshkov. Severstal had already swapped goalies in the first; Konstantin Shostak replacing Alexander Samoilov after the fourth goal.

In the end, the visitor almost gave SKA a late scare. Danil Aimurzin added to his two earlier assists to make it 4-8 in the 48th minute, then Zykov was ejected from the game for a foul on Mark Barberio. The major penalty saw Adam Liska divert an elevated puck past Serebryakov for Severstal’s fifth of the night. However, there was no more scoring as SKA took an entertaining game 8-5.