Minsk celebrates first ever KHL playoff progress

Dinamo Minsk dumped CSKA Moscow out of the Gagarin Cup. A 5-2 victory in the Russian capital completed a 4-2 series win for Dmitry Kvartalnov’s men. It’s the first time in KHL history that the Belarusians have progressed beyond the first round of the playoffs, with Kvartalnov getting the better of one of his former clubs to make history.

Borikov double leads Bison to round two

CSKA Moscow 2 Dinamo Minsk 6 (1-1, 0-1, 1-4)

(Dinamo wins the series 4-2)

The first road win in this series proved decisive for Dinamo, lifting the Bison over CSKA in six games to confirm the third team to advance from the Western Conference. Dinamo joins Lokomotiv and Spartak, with the Dynamo Moscow vs SKA series still on-going.

With victory in sight, Dinamo made a lively start to the game and generally looked sharper than CSKA in the first period. The visitor turned that into an opening goal in the 14th minute when Nicolas Meloche got the puck on the left-hand boards and moved to the circle to fire in a shot that evaded the efforts of Christian Jaros to block and got behind Ivan Prosvetov.

However, teams that score first in this series have rarely prospered and CSKA threatened to continue that trend. The Muscovites tied it up 10 seconds before the intermission on a goal from Maxim Sorkin after goalie Vasily Demchenko lost position and Colby Williams set up the home forward with a simple finish into an open net.

That error might have proved costly, not just in terms of the scoreline but also in terms of momentum. It would have been easy for Dinamo’s confidence to take a jolt going into the intermission. But the visitor came out for the second period and stuck to its gameplan. Both teams had early chances, but Minsk got back in front on a 28th-minute goal for Yegor Borikov, banging in a one-timer off a Meloche diagonal.

That sparked a scuffle involved Fredrik Claesson and Ilya Usov, both of home sat out roughing minors. By the midway point, Dinamo led the second-period shot count 7-2, highlighting the difficulties CSKA faced in retrieving the game. A couple of home power plays in the latter half of the frame hinted at a way back, but the lead held to the second intermission.

And the start of the final frame saw Dinamo put the game – and the series – to bed. Josh Brook got his second of the series to extend the lead in the 44th minute and barely a minute later, Vitaly Pinchuk added a fourth on the power play. By this time, it seemed clear that CSKA’s season was over: the home team showed little sign of overturning a three-goal deficit in the remaining 14 minutes of the game.

Borikov’s second of the game merely turbocharged the Belarusian party in the 53rd minute and not even a Vladislav Provolnev goal for the host could impact the final outcome. Ilya Vorobyov tried to shake some life back into the game in the closing minutes but there was a certain inevitability about an empty-net goal for Dinamo as Alexander Volkov completed the scoring.