SKA early pacesetters in KHL

The Saint Petersburg based team, led by former NHL star Ilya Kovalchuk, have won eight out of their nine games this season to sit atop the KHL standings.

They’ve also done it in fashion as they lead in the league in goals against, while sit second in goals scored. Salak Alexander leads the KHL with a 96.8% save percentage while boasting a 1.00 GAA.

While it’s tight early on in the conference standings, a couple of teams have begun to distinguish themselves early on besides pre-season favourite SKA.

Dinamo-Minsk sit second it the West behind SKA, having won six of their nine games (19 points), and they are closely followed by Dinamo Riga who have 18 points.

The East conference is topped by Barys who have 18 points thanks to winning six of their seven games. There is a tie for second between Kharlamov division rivals Ak Bars and Neftekhimik on 17 points.

Nigel Dawes leads the league in points as the Barys forward has 12 points with five goals. Viktor Tikhonov of SKA is tied for the league lead in goals with six along with Maxim Pestushko of Dynamo Moscow.

KHL League News:

For the September 15th -23rd period, the following players were named players of the week:

Best goaltender of the week was Stanislav Galimov (Atlant), with three wins in three games, one shutout, and a save percentage of 95.4%.

Best defenseman was Stanislav Romanov (Neftekhimik), who played in four games, all victories, earning 3 points (0+3) and an efficiency rating of +8.

Best forward was Jan Kovar (Metallurg Magnitogorsk), who finished the week with 9 points (4+5) from four outings.

Best rookie was young forward Bogdan Yakimov (Neftekhimik), with 4 points (1+3) in four games.

Bratislava, located in Slovakia, has been named as the host city for the 2014 KHL All-Star game, which will be held on January 11th.  It marks the first time that the event takes place outside of the former USSR. 

Tom Rowe was fired as manager of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl on September 20th after the poor start by his side. He has been replaced by youth team boss Pyotr Vorobyov. Rowe is the third coach to lose his job this season following the dismissals of Petri Matikainen’s at Avangard and Sergei Svetlov’s firing by Atlant.

The point scoring in the KHL is as follows:

3 points – regulation win
2 points – overtime or shootout win
1 point – overtime or shootout loss
0 points – regulation loss

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