The closing round of the regular season would give the answer to one key question – which team would claim the last spot in the Superfinal. Dinamo Minsk did not enjoy its best weekend, but won its head-to-head encounter with Sibir to open an eight-point gap that proved enough to get over the line.
“We took a long time to get going, but in the middle of the season and towards the end we competed well,” Sibir’s head coach Denis Tyurin summed up. That assessment also matched Sibir’s performance in the final round. The Siberians began with three successive losses, but recovered on Saturday to produce performances of the level of a championship contender – 7-3 over Dinamo and 9-2 against Metallurg. But it was too little, too late.
This round also settled the outcome of the scoring race for the regular season. Metallurg Pavel Varfolomeyev came out on top, despite being suspended for the first two games of the round after swearing at an official during a 1-8 loss to Ak Bars in round 21’s Supergame. Varfolomeyev’s closest rival was his line-mate Sergei Shmelyov, who gained two extra opportunities to score but managed just two points in those games. When Varfolomeyev returned, he did so in style – four goals on Dinamo and a hat-trick on Salavat Yulaev. In four games, the Magnitka forward plundered 12 (8+4) points at an average of three a game!
Varfolomeyev finished the season with 125 points, Shmelyov with 121.
Dmitry Marchenkov (Metallurg)
It’s not easy for any of Metallurg’s players to shift the focus away from Varfolomeyev and Shmelyov, but Dmitry Marchenkov managed to do it. First, along with Denis Polukarov, he did well as “the other guy” when the league’s top scorer was disqualified. Then Marchenkov became the fifth player to reach 100 points for the season. He’s arguably the most under-rated player among the 3x3 Championship’s leading scorers. And certainly, the most modest. “It’s not just my achievement, but an achievement for everyone on the team who helped me,” Marchenkov said. “Anyone could have scored 100 points, it just turned out to be me. Thanks guys, thanks to the team.”
Dinamo Minsk 5 Sibir 4
Sibir’s second game in this round was do-or-die: defeat would end any hope of making the Superfinal. Meanwhile, Dinamo knew that victory would secure its place.
Things began well enough for Sibir, and the team got up 2-0 in the first period. But then came a run of fouls, and Vitaly Pinchuk repeatedly punished that ill-discipline. He finished with four goals, three of them from penalty shots. By the end of the second period, Minsk was up 5-4 and that was how it stayed until the end. The final frame was tense and hard-fought – much like we can expect from every game in the upcoming Superfinal. But there was no further scoring as Dinamo booked its place in the deciding phase.
Yury Sirotkin (Salavat Yulaev)
No goalie has played as much as Salavat Yulaev’s Georgy Dubrovsky this season. But in the final round, he found a worthy replacement – 26-year-old Yury Sirotkin. First impressions were mixed: by modern standards Sirotkin is pretty short at 174 cm, and when he dropped to his pads, he risked leaving the top of the goal open. The opposition took advantage at first, but Yury adapted to the format during his first tournament and went on to show that his size could be an advantage, giving greater mobility. In the end, Salavat’s new goaltending tandem inspired the best performance for three months before going on to beat Metallurg 4-1 in the Supergame.