Riga wins battle of bad against terrible

A strong Torpedo Nizhni Novgorod turned a 0-2 deficit against clear favourites SKA St. Petersburg into a solid 4-2 win. SKA Super star Ilya Kovalchuk had a goal and an assist to get the guests in front with two first-period goals. Only at 38:56 did Torpedo react by cutting the deficit to one with a strike by Dmitry Makarov. Shortly after that St. Petersburg saw two of their guys take a seat in the penalty box, which was punished at 40:41 - again Makarov was the scorer. Mikhail Varnakov and Alexander Syomin even made perfect the three-point win for the hosts. For SKA it was the second consecutive loss after their defeat in Yaroslavl.

Two days after their convincing 6-1 win against bottom side Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, the Capitals of Spartak Moscow took a really bad loss themselves. Against Metallurg Magnitogorsk They were outscored in the second period 0-5 what made it six consecutive goals for Magnitka as Spartak had opened the score in the first period. It is not really surprsing that all three NHL lockout players Evgeny Malkin, Sergei Gonchar and Nikolai Kulemin earned points in this match. In the end it was an easy 7-2 away win for Magnitogorsk.

A heavy give-away by Vityaz Chekhov in the fight for the playoffs of the second half of the KHL table. They led the game against Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk with 1-0 and 3-1 but Ivan Yatsenko and Vitaly Sitnikov - the second one at 58:30 - tied the match for Yugra. In the fifth round of the shootout Igor Magogin won the extra point for Yugra which now has won 8 of their last 11 matches and is doing everything to keep in touch with the playoff spots, especially against the other bottom sides of the league.

Belarussian side Dinamo Minsk continued their race to catch up with a 2-1 overtime win over Barys Astana from Kazakhstan. Tim Stapleton brought the hosts in front at 17:13 but at the end of the second period Andrei Gavrilin scored the equalizer for the guests. With only 14 seconds left in overtime Finnish import Teemu Laine earned the game winner for Dinamo. It was already their fourth win in the last five matches, making them 5th in Tarasov Division.

It was the perfect chance for Dinamo Riga from Latvia to get back on track as they received the only team with less point than themselves - Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg. Though the home win was not as easy as it might have been expected. Stanislav Zhmakin with a double within less than 3 minutes of the first period even made it 2-1 for the guests. In the end a strong middle period was decisive for the 6-3 home win by Dinamo.

 

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