Avangard arrived in Yaroslavl for the third game of the second round of the Gagarin Cup with Lokomotiv as a team that, by and large, had nothing to lose. The Hawks lost the first leg and a crushing 0-7 defeat in the second game led to the surprising expulsion of Mikhail Kravets.
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Instead of the 60-year-old specialist, Sergei Zvyagin took over the management of the team, but this change in the squad of the Omsk team was not the only one: first center Ryan Spooner returned to the lineup, having missed the matches in the G-Drive Arena, which caused changes in the rest of the attack. Lokomotiv also had a couple of comebacks: Yaroslav Likhachev returned to the ice after missing the second game, but Yegor Averin appeared in the lineup for the first time since the third game of the series against CSKA.
“The emotional situation in the team? The guys are loaded, yesterday was a very difficult day, so we asked the guys, no matter how difficult it was for them, to immediately switch to positive. Confidence and faith must emanate from all of us and I think the guys were skating in a good mood now,” Zvyagin said before the start of the match.
Avangard’s intensity was manifested in the first turn: the forward of the visiting team quickly reached the attacking zone and took a couple of shots, which, however, did not reach the goal. The “hawks” stopped there for a while: Lokomotiv looked more powerful and interesting when playing with the same strength and for a long time did not allow the opponent not only to control the puck, but also to leave its own zone.
The Omsk team had the opportunity to change the situation midway through the first half, when Andrei Sergeev entered the area. For almost two minutes, Avangard tried unsuccessfully to position itself in the attacking third, but the railroaders, despite the guests’ momentary success, seemed to clear the puck very easily. And just a couple of seconds before Sergeev’s departure, the representatives of the East achieved their goal: Semyon Chistyakov’s click from the blue line turned out to be impossible for Daniil Isaev, who failed for the first time in just over 146 minutes.
Video rights belong to KHL LLC. The video can be seen on the league’s official website.
At the end of twenty minutes, Lokomotiv already had the opportunity to play with the opponent, and the Yaroslavl team did not waste it either. The comeback goal was scored by Stepan Nikulin, who tied the game with a wrist shot from the left service circle.
Video rights belong to KHL LLC. The video can be seen on the league’s official website.
In the second half, there was no trace of Avangard’s intensity: visually it seemed that Lokomotiv won all the duels and took almost all the rebounds, without letting the hockey players of the Omsk team breathe. Regardless of which combination of “hawks” was present on the ice, whether it was the first or the fourth line, they basically had to retreat, so powerful was the pressure of Igor Nikitin’s wards. The railroaders played aggressively, and this aggression led to an unforced foul in the attacking zone, but the guests did not know how to take advantage of it, unlike a similar situation in the first half. However, at the end of the 40th minute they did not allow the Yaroslavl team to take the lead either.
The third half passed again with the hosts with an advantage in the game, but the only thing that can be highlighted was the duel between Yaroslav Likhachev and Artyom Chmykhov: 60 minutes of regulation time were not enough to determine the winner, and for the second time In the series, the teams had to solve all the problems in overtime.
It took Avangard just over two minutes to return the intrigue to this confrontation: the first link of the “hawks”, who remained silent throughout the match, knew how to become the X factor at the most necessary moment. The accurate shot, naturally, was scored by Reed Boucher, who scored the eighth goal in these playoffs and helped the Omsk team reduce the score in the series to a minimum. 1:2 and 2-1: as Igor Nikitin said after the second match, everything is just beginning here. “Avant-garde” is still alive!
