Avangard goes second in the East. January 29 round-up

A single goal was enough for Avangard to beat Traktor and move to second place in the Eastern Conference. Another in-form team, Sibir, overpowered Dinamo Minsk 4-1 and tightened its grip on eighth place in the East. Amur snapped a nine-game skid with victory  over Avtomobilist and Sochi moved off the foot of the Western Conference thanks to a 2-1 verdict at Shanghai Dragons.

Tigers end long wait for victory

Amur Khabarovsk 5 Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg 2 (0-0, 2-1, 3-1)

The Tigers halted a nine-game losing streak and, in the process, handed Avtomobilist a first regulation time loss since Jan. 8.

The home team handed debuts to Grigory Kuzmin and Ivan Vorobyov, who joined the team as part of Ignat Korotkikh’s move to Spartak ahead of the trade deadline. Avto made just one change, with Maxim Osipov replacing defenseman Sergei Zborovsky.

In a goalless first period, Amur made a bright start and tested visiting goalie Vladimir Galkin after earning the game’s first power play. For Avtomobilist, the Sprong-Sharov-Macek line was the most threatening. In  particular, Daniel Sprong was close to a breakthrough with a shot against the piping; later he sliced through the defense but Alexander Sharov could not convert an inviting feed.

The second period saw Avtomobilist make the brighter start, only for the Motormen to be caught on the counterattack. Yaroslav Likhachyov made a great rush down the wing and shrugged off the attentions of the opposition to set up Alexander Galchenyuk to beat Galkin at the second attempt.

The visitor’s first power play produced a tying goal: Jesse Blacker adopted Brooks Macek’s preferred position in the circle and fired past Maxim Dorozhko.

After that, the visitor got the upper hand and took advantage of the close bench to keep Amur locked in its zone. Sprong hit the piping again, but there would be no go-ahead goal. Instead, close to the second intermission, Amur stepped up the pressure and forced a string of errors, culminating in a goal for Nikita Yevseyev.

The final frame began with Amur on the power play. The Tigers’ special team got an unlikely goal when Artyom Shvaryov’s shot bounced off Reid Boucher’s foot and flew into the open side of the net. And the next shift brought another defensive lapse from the visitor, ending in Alex Broadhurst padding the lead amid chaos in front of Galkin’s net.

The third period saw Evgeny Svechnikov add a fifth before home goalie Viktor Kobozev got his time to shine. The 21-year-old, a penalty shot specialist, had only previously got on the ice to clinch a shoot-out win at SKA in December. Today, he replaced Dorozhko to face Boucher’s attempt following Viktor Baldayev’s foul. Kobozev outwitted the prolific American, justifying the switch, then returned to the bench for the remainder of the game. In the last minute, Sharov grabbed a power play goal for Avtomobilist, but by then the game was long gone.

In-form Sibir too hot for Minsk

Sibir Novosibirsk 4 Dinamo Minsk 1 (1-0, 2-0, 1-1)

A fourth successive victory reinforces Sibir’s position in the top eight, while Dinamo fell to a third loss in four games. The visitor missed the chance to close to within a point of the Western Conference leadership.

The previous meeting between these teams brought a crushing 7-0 victory for the Belarusians, hastening the end of Vyacheslav Butsayev’s spell behind the Sibir bench. His replacement, Yaroslav Lyuzenkov, has managed to get his players on the same page and looks to be leading the team to a playoff spot that seemed unlikely a couple of months ago.

After a successful road trip, Sibir made a confident start on home ice. It took more than 10 minutes for Dinamo to get a shot at Mikhail Berdin and by that stage the visitor was already behind. Alexei Yakovlev opened the scoring in the eighth minute, with Minsk goalie Zach Fucale risking injury in his attempt to make the save. Home debutant Andrei Loktionov made a bright start for his new club, going close to scoring himself then seeing a dangerous feed cut out by Fucale before anyone could turn it into the net.

At the other end, Dinamo managed just one dangerous attack in the opening frame. But things changed in the second. The visitor enjoyed greater control of the puck and looked capable of tying the scores – only to be hit with a counterattack that saw Sergei Shirokov set up Fyodor Gordeyev’s first goal of the season. Minsk kept attacking and even moved ahead in shots, but fell further behind when Semyon Koshelev surprised Fucale to make it 3-0.

Any hope of a fightback was extinguished at the start of the third when Andy Andreoff scored on the power play. The remainder of the game was all about whether Berdin could secure his first KHL shut-out. However, penalty trouble in the last 10 minutes opened the door for Dinamo, and Darren Dietz’s power play goal means that the 27-year-old netminder’s wait continues.

McLeod makes the difference for Avangard

Avangard Omsk 1 Traktor Chelyabinsk 0 (0-0, 0-0, 1-0)

A solitary goal was enough to lift Avangard to second in the Eastern Conference after recording a sixth successive victory.

Although the Hawks were active before the trade deadline, head coach Guy Boucher was in no hurry to hand his new acquisitions a debut. The only change from the team that beat Admiral was the return of starting goalie Nikita Serebryakov. Traktor, likewise, didn’t change up its team, with Slovak defenseman Michal Cajkovsky still on his way to Chelyabinsk.

For a long time, this was a goaltending duel between Serebryakov and Sergei Mylnikov. In a goalless first period, the Traktor netminder was well supported by his defense and only five of Avangard’s 19 attempts on goal required a save. At the other end, Serebryakov was busier but neither team could make the breakthrough.

At the start of the second period, Mike McLeod was racing towards the Traktor net when he was fouled by Jordan Gross. Konstantin Okulov stepped up to take the penalty shot, but Mylnikov made a comfortable save. After that incident, the tempo dropped and both teams played more cautiously, resulting in a stop-start contest. Both teams had power play chances, but neither could capitalize as the opponents went into the third period still seeking a goal.

With just over seven minutes to play, Traktor’s Arseny Koromyslov shot the puck over the glass and Avangard got yet another PP. Once again, the Hawks could not convert, but just as Koromyslov left the box the home team made the breakthough. Damir Sharipzyanov’s shot from the blue line was redirected perfectly by McLeod. That opened the scoring in the 55th minute and extended Sharipzyanov’s hot streak to 10 games.

Traktor had one more power play chance, and finished the game playing six-on-five but Avangard held on to take the win.

Khomchenko stars in Sochi win

Shanghai Dragons 1 HC Sochi 2 (0-1, 1-1, 0-0)

Sochi moved off the foot of the Western Conference after avenging its recent defeat to the Dragons.

Three days ago these teams met beside the Black Sea, with Shanghai winning 6-2 to give Mitch Love his first victory as a head coach in the KHL.

Today, the Leopards headed north to St. Petersburg on a revenge mission, and halted a four-game skid. The win puts Sochi ahead of Lada, while Shanghai remains eight points adrift of the top eight.

The visitor got an early boost when Troy Josephs was assessed a cross-checking minor in the second minute. That was the first of five penalties for the Dragons in the opening frame, against just one for Sochi. However, the pattern of play was fairly even and the only goal came with the teams at equal strength. It arrived in the seventh minute when defenseman Ilya Sushko drilled a long-range effort past Andrei Tikhomirov to register his first goal of the season.

Early in the second, Sochi doubled its lead. The Dragons defense left the slot unguarded, Timur Khafizov found acres of space and set up Pavel Dedunov for a routine finish in the 22nd minute. After that, the home team stepped up its play and dominated much of the second period. Reward came after 36 minutes when Nick Merkley pulled a goal back.

And the third period was almost one-way traffic. Sochi goalie Pavel Khomchenko stopped 18 shots, while his team-mates mustered just two efforts at the other end. But the home team could not find a tying goal; Khomchenko finished with 40 saves to backstop a first win in five games.