All square in Gagarin Cup

21 Apr 2014 | Alan Ilijic

After two games have been played in the Gagarin Cup Finals, we're back at the start as the series is tied at 1. The road to the Cup will be long and debilitating.

After a humiliating loss on home ice opening the Finals series, Metallurg stroke back to level the score. Lev's 3:0 win gets anulled with a symetrical response - 4:1 in favor of Metallurg Magnitogorsk. The margin stays the same, only Petri Vehanen gets the shutout.

The series now move to Prague, Czech Republic. The O2 Arena in the Czech capital has been the place where Lev was hardly beaten, ranking 9th in the regular season and 1st overall in the playoffs. Lev have been beaten only once on home soil in this season's playoffs - in the semifinals to Donbass after overtime.

In Game 1 Martin Sevc, Petr Vrana and Justin Azevedo set the road to the win with three unanswered goals, one in each respective period. Justin Azevedo picked the assist on the go-ahead, while Martin Sevc scored his first in the playoffs. He picked the right time.

Metallurg answered back with a second-period rally in Game 2. Bogdan Potekhin started, Danis Zaripov continued and Jan Kovar finished the period to get Metallurg up front 3:0. Lev couldn't have crawled back after such a blitzkrieg which allowed Sergei Mozyakin to stretch the score to a four-goal margin. As the end was getting close, Justin Azevedo made sure Vasily Koshechkin didn't get the shutout, leaving the Czech netminder with the sole shutout in the series.

Sergei Mozyakin continues his great form, with three new points picked in that Game 2 he's on top of the points section, as well as goals section and leads the playoffs. He's got 8 in the goals department and 14 in the assists - a total of 22 points. He's also scored 6 game-winners, making him Metallurg's most efficient player.

Lev's players lead in three statistical sections - shutouts (Petri Vehanen, 3), plus/minus (Martin Sevc, +9) and penalties (Ryan O'Byrne, 53 mins), the latter not being much of the lead.

Mozyakin - Kovar - Zaripov continued in the playoffs what they had started in the regular season. They top the scoring for Metallurg way over the rest of the team. Of the 41 goals they had scored, the MKZ line had 23. The only team scoring more than Metallurg are their opponents - Lev Prague with 50. And take into consideration Lev played two games less.

Metallurg's key player, Sergei Mozyakin, has surpassed his best-ever season, when he was playing in Atlant in 2010/11 campaign. His first captaining season in Magnitogorsk proves to be the best one of his entire professional career - his third with the current team.

Next game takes place on the 22nd of April in Prague.