Ak Bars drubbed at home, losing start for Desyatkov

Avangard handed Ak Bars a 6-1 defeat in Kazan, with Andrew Poturalski contributing four points. The Hawks claimed a fifth straight win to jump to second in the Eastern Conference. Pavel Desyatkov’s first game as head coach at Lada also ended in defeat as SKA won 3-0 in Togliatti. Metallurg withstood a third-period fightback to edge CSKA 5-4 and go clear at the top of the East. Earlier, Traktor missed its chance to lead the way after going down 3-5 at home to Spartak. Avtomobilist suffered a surprise 1-4 loss at home to Neftekhimik, which draws level on points with today’s opponent.

Underdog bites as Spartak wins in Chelyabinsk

Traktor Chelyabinsk 3 Spartak Moscow 5 (1-2, 2-2, 0-1)

Spartak reversed the form book to get the win at Traktor. Going into Sunday’s game, the home team had won four of its last five, while the Red-and-Whites suffered four losses in their previous five games. Six out of the eight goals in Chelyabinsk were scored by defensemen.



Full of confidence, Traktor made the brighter start and secured the first power play of the game. However, the home team could not turn pressure into a goal and was caught out by Spartak’s first chance of the afternoon. Andrei Mironov opened the scoring on six minutes during a delayed penalty. Spartak’s first power play of the game brought a second goal when Alexander Pashin went around the net to set up German Rubtsov in the 16th minute. Traktor hit back just before the intermission when Jordan Gross got his first goal since joining from Dinamo Minsk.

Another home D-man, Grigory Dronov, tied it up at 2-2 early in the second. He stepped up from the blue line, closed in on Artyom Zagidulin’s net and picked out the far corner.

In the 26th minute, Nikita Kholodilin was booted from the game after kneeing Andrei Svetlakov. Traktor’s Fyodor Kroshchinsky got involved, starting a fight with Kholodilin that earned him 17 minutes in total. A minute later, Mironov went to the box for tripping and Traktor had a four-on-three power play. Dronov took advantage for his second of the game and the home team looked to have turned the game around.

But the lead was shortlived. On a day when defensemen dominated the scoring, Spartak had two goals in 23 seconds from Mironov (his second of the game) and Daniil Orlov.

In the third period, Traktor looked to save the game. Twice, the home team got on the power play but could not find a tying goal. The final word went to Pavel Poryadin, whose empty net goal completed a 5-3 win.

CSKA fightback falls short at Magnitka

Metallurg Magnitogorsk 5 CSKA Moscow 4 (2-1, 3-1, 0-2)

After scoring five goals in half an hour, Metallurg looked to have this game under control. However, CSKA battled back to make it a one-goal game and set up an anxious conclusion before Andrei Razin’s team secured a fourth successive win.



The visitor made a fast start and opened the scoring in the fourth minute when Vitaly Abramov produced a perfect shot from mid-range. Metallurg was helped by a handily-timed power play and tied the game with a playbook move: Robin Press fired in a point shot, Luke Johnson steered it past Spencer Martin. Within two minutes, a similar play defeated Martin again. This time it was Daniil Vovchenko’s touch on Danila Palivko’s shot to give Magnitka a 2-1 lead. It might have been more, with Ruslan Isakhov hitting the post against his former club.

The scoring followed a similar pattern in the middle frame. CSKA struck early through Yaroslav Yapparov, but Metallurg regained the lead thanks to a pair of power play markers. Roman Kantserov got the first, redirecting Yegor Yakovlev’s drive. Then the home defenseman set up Dmitry Silantyev’s one-timer to make it 4-2 in the 27th minute. Soon after, Nikita Mikhailis made it 5-2 and seemingly had the Steelmen cruising.

However, what should have been a straightforward finish proved to be anything but. Metallurg kept pushing for more goal, but it was CSKA that found the net on a rare raid: Nikolai Kovalenko converted Daniel Sprong’s feed. Then, in the 48th minute, Denis Zernov made it a one-goal game with plenty of time left for the Muscovites to save it.

Metallurg responded by giving more time to the fourth line and that moved play away from Ilya Nabokov’s net. Gradually, CSKA geared up for one last surge but the best chance of a tying goal was lost when Sprong’s stick shattered as he lined up a dangerous shot.

Neftekhimik stuns Avtomobilist in Yekaterinburg

Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg 1 Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk 4 (0-0, 1-1, 0-3)

For the second game in a row, Avtomobilist allowed four goals. Today, against Neftekhimik, it was unable to match the opposition’s firepower and fell to a heavy loss. The Wolves recorded a fourth win in five games, and edged in front of the Motormen into fourth place.



Neftekhimik shuffled its top three lines after losing the previous game at Traktor. There was a KHL debut for 27-year-old Nikita Popugayev (not to be confused with his namesake, once of Lada and now at Shanghai Dragons) as the visitor made four changes.

The visitor made the brighter start to the game and had more attempts on goal in the first period but could not solve Evgeny Alikin. That changed after the intermission when Vladislav Barulin won possession behind the net, Alexander Dergachyov dished off the puck and Damir Zhafyarov found the target. Avto was close to tying the scores quickly when it got on the power play, but Jesse Blacker was denied by the post.

It took a third home power play to tie the game. Goalie Fillip Dolganov got his glove to a lofted puck, but could only knock it down into the danger zone where Semyon Kizimov was poised to score.

Penalty trouble undermined Avtomobilist at the start of the third. Neftekhimik had a five-on-three advantage and regained the lead when Danil Yurtaikin banged home Evgeny Mityakin’s feed to the back door. Another power play a couple of minutes later saw Popugayev celebrate a debut goal.

Later, Neftekhimik ran into its own penalty problems and had to kill a three-on-five situation. Stephane da Costa was the second home player to ding the piping, but the only other goal came at the other end when Andrei Belozyorov found an empty net. Yurtaikin’s assist gave him three points in the game.

New coach, old story for Lada

Lada Togliatti 0 SKA St. Petersburg 3 (0-1, 0-1, 0-1)

A slow start to the season prompted Lada to replace head coach Boris Mironov with Pavel Desyatkov, previously at Vityaz. However, the change of direction did not yield an immediate response and the Motormen fell to a 0-3 loss on home ice.



SKA put the skids under Lada early in this game. Rocco Grimaldi got on a solo rush in the second minute and beat Alexander Trushkov for his second goal in the KHL.

That spoiled Desyatkov’s return to Togliatti where, in the 1990s, he was a forward on a consistently strong Lada team that routinely contested top honors. The current team is a long way from that level, and after falling behind it rarely looked like taking something from Sunday’s game.

The new head coach was eager to stamp his mark on the team. Dmitry Kugryshev replaced Vladislav Syomin as captain, and there were some new-look attacking lines for the host.

That helped the team stay in the game despite allowing that early goal. Lada did not roll over and instead began to claw back the deficit in shots and create some chances. At the start of the second period, there was even a five-on-three power play for the home team. However, Lada could not take advantage.
By the end of the second period, there was no significant difference in shots. However, SKA managed to double its lead. Midway through the session

Matvei Korotky skilfully got away from Andrei Obidin to make it 2-0 after good work from Pavel Dishkovsky to win possession.

And Dishkovsky finished with a goal of his own, finding the empty net after Lada gambled on a sixth skater with three-and-a-half minutes to play. That sealed a fifth straight loss for Desyatkov’s new charges and left the incoming head coach with a clear idea of the work required to kickstart the season. 
 

Poturalski stars in Avangard rout

Ak Bars Kazan 1 Avangard Omsk 6 (1-2, 0-1, 0-3)

Another team in search of a boost, Ak Bars, hoped that a Green Derby win over Salavat Yulaev would trigger an upswing. For 30 seconds of Sunday’s game against Avangard, things looked good – but it ended in a heavy loss for Anvar Gatiyatulin’s men.



Four points from Andrew Poturalski and two goals for Konstantin Okulov made the difference as the Hawks avenged a home loss early in the season.
For Ak Bars, the start was perfect. Vladimir Alistrov, who secured a two-year contract after a try-out in Kazan, scored his first goal for his new employer in the first minute. The former SKA man converted a counter attack to beat his former team-mate in Petersburg Nikita Serebryakov.

But Avangard responded immediately through Mikhail Kotlyarevsky, who tied the game on 1:53. Stepan Falkovsky thought he had restored the home lead, but Guy Boucher’s bench challenge saw that sixth-minute incident ruled out for offside. And the visitor took a lead into the intermission thanks to Okulov’s first of the game on the power play.

In the middle frame, Okulov struck again and this time Gatiyatulin held goalie Mikhail Berdin responsible. He was immediately replaced by Timur Bilyalov, but the change did little to improve Ak Bars’ prospects. Yes, the incoming goalie made some good saves, but he was often exposed by his defense, which hinted at more trouble to come. At the other end, the Ak Bars offense got the puck onto the Avangard line, but not over it, as Serebryakov faced a stern examination late in the frame.

The third period saw Porturalski scored the visitor’s fourth, adding to his assists on Okulov’s goals. And the American completed an impressive individual performance with a third helper as Max Lajoie’s power play goal pushed the scoreline towards a rout. Ansel Galimov added a sixth with two minutes to play as Avangard reeled off a fifth successive win.