First of the season, first in 14 years

Last week saw Kirill Slepets repeat an achievement not seen in the KHL since 2010 – and it wasn’t the only ‘first’ we witnessed. Barys became the first team to change head coach, a Torpedo forward upgraded his first goal into a first hat-trick, and SKA’s new signing was involved in a memorable first game in the KHL.

One PK, two goals

What links Kirill Slepets and Dmitry Tarasov, and nobody else in KHL history? They are the only two players to score two shorthanded goals in the same penalty kill. Slepets scored twice in 60 seconds against Vityaz, helping Amur to its first home win of the season. Tarasov, an Amur legend, was the first player to do this way back in Jan. 2010 when he was playing for Sibir.

Barys goes for Butsayev

The first coaching casualty of the season arrived last week. Barys dismissed David Nemirovsky after six losses in seven games. Vyacheslav Butsayev took his place and made an encouraging start with a 1-0 victory over Sochi. That lifted the Kazakh team off the foot of the overall standings, but so far has not kickstarted the season. In his second game Butsayev lost to Vityaz, the team he took the 2023 playoffs.

Winning streak, losing streak

Ak Bars went to Eastern Conference leader Avtomobilist on Sunday and claimed a 6-2 victory. That stretches the Kazan team’s hot streak to six games and puts it a point behind the Motormen having played two games fewer. Many teams would envy that kind of form, but few more than Avangard right now. The Hawks are on a seven-game skid, an abrupt reversal of fortune after winning its first three of the season. In Avangard’s defense, six of those seven losses came on a prolonged road trip: starting today, Sergei Zvyagin’s team can try to put things right in familiar surroundings when Sibir visits to kick off a three-game home stand. Better still, Avangard can do this with help from Reid Boucher; last season’s top scorer recovered from injury and played his first games last week.

Good things come to those who wait

For Torpedo forward Denis Pochivalov, a first KHL goal was a long-term project. The 23-year-old made his debut back in the 2018/19 season and went 52 games in the league without scoring a goal. But he changed all that in Saturday’s 7-2 win at Amur. Pochivalov not only got his first tally in the big league, he immediately turned it into a hat-trick! Is this the future of Torpedo’s offense?

Rylov reaches 800

Amur’s defenseman Yakov Rylov played his 800th KHL game in that Torpedo match-up. With only a handful of players achieving that total, he is currently third in all-time appearances among defensemen, behind Grigory Panin (840) and Evgeny Biryukov (retired after 1,001 games).

Crazy scores at SKA

St. Petersburg is currently the goalscoring capital of the KHL. In SKA’s last two games, fans have seen the puck in the net 21 times. It started with a barn-burner of an 8-5 win over Severstal on Friday, a game that was 3-2 inside nine minutes and 5-2 at the first intermission. New signing Tony De Angelo made his debut in that game and had three assists. Then on Sunday, Kunlun Red Star came to town and scored five more on SKA. This time, the visitor got the win despite a late rally that saw the host come from 1-5 to 4-5 before the Dragons got it over the line.

Kuznetsov injured

Evgeny Kuznetsov, SKA’s highest-profile signing in a busy summer, could miss the next two months. He picked up an upper-body injury during that Severstal game and the first reports from the club hinted at a long lay-off. However, after Sunday’s loss to KRS, head coach Roman Rotenberg insisted that this was a conservative estimate from the medics: “We’ll work to get Evgeny back as quickly as possible. I’m sure it won’t be two months. If we were in the playoffs, we might be giving him injections so he could play but at this stage we’re not going to risk the health of our players.”

DeAngelo, Tierney come to the KHL

SKA’s capture of De Angelo – a productive 28-year-old defenseman with 397 NHL appearances – made headlines early last week. But the American was not the only eye-catching addition to the league. Dinamo Minsk announced the imminent arrival of Chris Tierney, a center who has 689 games across 10 NHL seasons. In that time he represented San Jose, Ottawa, Florida, Montreal and New Jersey, scoring 85 goals and 175 assists. The 30-year-old Canadian made his KHL debut on Sunday in Dinamo’s 2-3 loss at home to Severstal.

Coming up

The big game in the coming week is in Yekaterinburg on Tuesday. Avtomobilist, leader of the Eastern Conference, faces Lokomotiv, leader of the West. Igor Nikitin’s team will be looking to consolidate its position atop the overall KHL standings, while Nikolai Zavarukhin will want a big reaction from his men after Sunday’s 2-6 loss to Ak Bars.