Avto leaves it late, Barys fails to score again. January 9 round-up

Thursday’s most entertaining game was in Yekaterinburg where Admiral led three times against Avtomoblist. However, the Sailors were unable to halt their skid, falling to a last-minute goal from Stepan Khripunov. Lada edged Barys 1-0, blanking the Kazakhs for the second time in five days. Despite a ninth successive loss, the Snow Leopards remain ahead of Amur at the foot of the Eastern Conference; the Tigers fell to defeat at fellow struggler Sochi.

Battling Avto sees off Admiral

Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg 4 Admiral Vladivostok 3 (0-1, 1-1, 3-1)

The Motormen defeated Admiral for the eight time in a row – but had to come from behind three times before Stepan Khripunov’s last-minute winner. Avtomobilist managed to build on its shoot-out win at Barys to maintain its push for a top-four spot in the East. Admiral, meanwhile, slipped to a sixth successive loss and risks getting sucked into a battle to make the playoffs.

That said, there wasn’t much wrong with the visitor’s performance and, on another night, the Sailors could easily have taken something from the game. They got the opening goal in the 16th minute when Georgy Solyannikov’s stretch pass set up Kirill Petkov. He slipped between defensemen and beat Vladimir Galkin with his first goal since Oct. 21.

Avtomobilist is traditionally strong in the second period, but struggled to maintain that tradition today. However, there was a great chance to tie the game when Darren Dietz saw his shot got past Andrei Mishurov only to roll along the goal line and drop to safety. The equalizer eventually came in the 32nd minute after Vladimir Kuznetsov broke down the wing and set up the unmarked Artyom Kashtanov.

Once level, Avto began to generate more pressure on Mishurov’s net. However, the next goal came from an Admiral counter and Nikita Soshnikov restored the visitor’s lead.

In the third period, once again, we saw the home team coming from behind and the visitor regaining the lead. Andrei Obidin tied it up in the 48th minute, but Admiral was back in front with 10 to play when Shane Prince beat Galkin with a penalty shot after a Dietz foul robbed him of his initial chance.

The closing stages saw fatigue play a role as Admiral ran into penalty trouble. Despite killing one, the second Avtomobilist power play saw Anatoly Golyshev tie the scores. The closing stages saw the home team dominate as the Sailors desperately clung on in a bid to force overtime. The resistance was broken in the last minute when Khripunov was first to react to the rebound from a Sergei Zborovsky shot and gave Avto the verdict. 

Gosudarev pots his first, Trushkov blanks Barys again

Lada Togliatti 1 Barys Astana 0 (0-0, 0-0, 1-0)

Alexander Trushkov clearly enjoys playing against Barys. The Lada goalie recorded his first KHL shut-out in Astana on Sunday, and followed that up with another today. That, combined with a first ever KHL goal from rookie forward Alexander Gosudarev, sent the Kazakhs spinning to a ninth successive loss.

For the visitor, goals remain the big problem. This was the fifth time the forwards came up blank during that nine-game skid, and the 13th this season that Barys has failed to score. Trushkov stopped 22 shots in a low-scoring game, but also enjoyed some good fortune when the post denied Alikhan Asetov and Damir Zhafyarov early in the game.

That fast start raised hopes of an action-packed encounter, but the tempo soon slowed. In the first period the teams managed just 10 shots between them.

The middle frame followed a similar pattern. Barys tested the piping once again – Dinmukhamed Kaiyrzhan was the luckless forward this time – before the teams again subsided into a cautious game.

A mark of the studied approach from both teams was the fact that the first penalty of the evening did not arrive until early in the third. Lada could not convert that chance, but finally made the breakthrough in the 55th minute. The goal went to Gosudarev, a 19-year-old forward playing only his seventh game in the KHL. He picked up a loose puck in the O-zone and swiftly fired it past Nikita Boyarkin. That proved sufficient to separate the teams. The win puts Lada up to 41 points, level with Sibir and Neftekhimik as the three teams battle for eighth place in the Eastern Conference. 

Bitten scores twice in basement battle

HC Sochi 5 Amur Khabarovsk 2 (1-0, 2-1, 2-1)

The basement teams from the Western and Eastern Conferences met in Sochi. Amur knew that victory would lift it ahead of Barys in the East, while the Leopards could only hope to close the gap on Vityaz to eight points.

Sochi was also looking to snap a four-game skid with a first win of 2025, while Amur’s most recent victory came at Traktor in its first game of the New Year.

The home team made a good start, with Sergei Popov opening the scoring in the third minute. Subsequently, Sochi continued to look the more dangerous in the first period, but could not add to its lead.

After the break, Alex Galchenyuk brought Amur level in the 27th minute. However, Sochi responded with two further goals. Artemy Kuznetsov made it 2-1 midway through the session, then Popov’s second of the night extended the lead. In between, Galchenyuk almost got an opportunistic second, trying to find the empty net from long distance after Evgeny Volokhin skated a long way out of his net. However, the puck went wide.

At the start of the third period, Galchenyuk turned provider and Vladislav Barulin made it 2-3 with a power play goal just 14 seconds into the frame. However, Will Bitten continued his impressive scoring form since joining Sochi and his fifth goal in six games restored that two-goal cushion. And the newly-productive import added an empty-netter to seal the verdict for the Leopards.