In the only game of the day in the KHL, perhaps the two biggest losers from the start of the regular season faced off: SKA hosted Siberia at the Ice Palace. Both clubs have not won for a long time: the series of defeats of the clubs amounted to four and three matches, respectively. Both naturally wanted to break these unpleasant streaks, but today only one team was destined to do so.
The hosts were the favorites, despite the longer fall: SKA had a stronger team and the military team did not seem hopeless in the game, especially in the last match against Dynamo. “Sibir” still cannot get used to the hockey offered by new coach David Nemirovsky. At the same time, both teams scored only 11 goals; According to this indicator in the KHL, they are second only to Vityaz, who scored one goal less. As a result, both SKA and Sibir were out of the playoff zone before the head-to-head matchup.
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The St. Petersburg team started the game more actively and forced the visiting player to retire for throwing the puck out of bounds. However, the majority played a cruel joke on them: at the beginning, Brendan Laipsic played in another’s zone and almost scored a goal in his own goal. Nikita Shashkov came out to meet Sergei Ivanov, but the young SKA goalkeeper confidently neutralized the threat.
But after some changes, as soon as the teams’ lineups were equalized again, he could no longer help his teammates: Taylor Beck’s shot, who took advantage of Sergei Sapego’s mistake, went unreachable into the near corner.
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Soon SKA had the opportunity to play in the power play again, and even “five against three”: Korotkov and Gordeev retired within a minute. At the end of the period, with unequal lineups, the military team attacked Anton Krasotkin’s goal, but the goalkeeper and defense held out, leaving their possessions intact.
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And then the parade of expulsions of the St. Petersburg players began: Tolchinsky and Kadeikin were on the bench in turn, and 38 seconds before the end of the period, when everything was gradually moving towards half-time, two local players took a penalty. box at a time. One of them was Lipsic: the Canadian very actively tried to convince the referees that he had been fouled in the center of the ice, and he continued to do so even after sitting on the bench, from where he was sent off.
He was accompanied by Alex Galchenyuk. But the American forward went to serve the sins of others, and specifically his coach, who also spoke rudely before the judges, defending the psychotic Laipsik. The irony is that the stick Brendan came across was an army one and belonged to Alexander Kadeikin.
It was already too late for the St. Petersburg team to correct anything in this situation: Sibir showed a masterclass in converting a power play in the five-on-three format, doubling the lead in just seven seconds. Beck tried again and in the match against SKA he scored more goals than in the previous six matches.
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The wave of eliminations continued in the second half: SKA sent Mikhail Vorobyov to the penalty area twice, while Sibir made three different players serve two-minute penalties. No one managed to score on the power play, but the only puck of the period flew into the goal shortly after the offending player came onto the ice.
This time the St. Petersburgers rejoiced: after a lot of torment on the spot in front of Krasotkin’s goal, Valentin Zykov, for whom the game against Dynamo was his 100th game in the KHL, finally found a way to put the puck in network. This goal was SKA’s first goal at equal strength in four games; the last such goal came in the away game against Torpedo on September 6.
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From the beginning of the third half, SKA pressured its rival to the goal, surpassing it in the first 10 minutes by 12:1. However, this did not bring dividends: the defenders blocked all shooting opportunities, forcing the army team to test Krasotkin’s reliability from disadvantageous positions.
Siberia’s incursions into the opposing half in the third twenty minutes could be counted on the fingers of one hand: the home team’s attack was so powerful that the Novosibirsk team had no choice but to try to get the puck out of their zone so soon as it came to one. of his players. These attempts were rarely successful: SKA quickly pinned Sibir and returned the action to the final third.
In the match against Dynamo, the St. Petersburg team took 38 shots on goal. Today, 44. But in each of these matches they scored only once: Anton Krasotkin and company kept the winning score for Siberia and became the third consecutive team to take two points from the city on the Neva. SKA’s total series of losses is already five matches, and today the match was largely lost due to two fines for behavior.
