Ak Bars returned the Kazan final – Kommersant
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The final play-off series of Fonbet of the KHL championship still reached the seventh match. Ak Bars, who were losing in it with a disastrous score – 1:3, equalized it by winning two matches in a row. The second – in Moscow, on the site of the army team, having defeated them – 3: 0 – thanks, first of all, to an amazing game in defense.
This match, having barely begun, raised the already high degree of intrigue in the final to the limit, to the degree of a dream. Well, at least for those who wanted it to stretch to the maximum distance.
Ak Bars was very good. And in what CSKA was inferior to him, it was not difficult to see. Teams that are one step away from the title, realizing that right now is the best chance to take it, because the game is at home, they are often the same as the army team has been for a long time – correct, but slightly enslaved, or something, afraid to go beyond correctness.
The guests, from whom the title was still quite far away, did not have any problems with the flight of fancy, and it did not interfere with following clear schemes. Hence the advantage – a tiny, but still advantage – Ak Bars.
Hence the goal in the four-on-four format, which took place after a low shot by Artem Galimov. Artem Lukoyanov was not formally included in the list of his assistants, but in fact he deserved an award for having won back a foothold in front of the goal, tightly blocking the view of goalkeeper Adam Reideborn.
The goal, it seems, was both a misfortune for CSKA and a boon, since after it the army team finally threw off the burden that had been hindering them from their shoulders. And the game blossomed with new colors. Now it was mainly the hosts who were seething and seething, and in the Kazan zone a dashing carousel was spinning, promising serious troubles. Ak Bars held on. Sometimes he kept on thin – as in that episode when Prokhor Poltapov, the most groovy and reckless player in the current army squad, stole the puck for himself and, shifting to the center, launched it into the goal, leaving goalkeeper Timur Bilyalov no hope of bailing out his own. Instead of Bilyalov, Ak Bars came to the rescue with a stand.
Anyone who watched this match must have thought that everything was going to the fact that CSKA equalized the score. After the break, he not only retained the pressure density – he added.
For several minutes in the second period, the puck was on the Ak Bars patch or near it almost more often than in all other areas of the site combined. And if she left a patch, then mainly in order to get to the army defender on duty on the blue line, for example, Nikita Nesterov. These minutes were a real hymn to the patience of Ak Bars, its well-trainedness, its ability, even when under such a monstrous weight of the press, not to break.
Unbroken guests endured until the breakdown of Vladislav Kamenev, removed for pushing Ilya Safonov with a stick. The majority of Ak Bars was already running out when Vadim Shipachev got the puck on the side of the net. In this final, the main center forward of Ak Bars plowed a lot, made great passes to his partners, but never scored a goal. And his team was terribly needed goals. In this majority he scored. Adam Reideborn seemed to have managed to move into the corner, he seemed to have managed to put down the shield, but some microscopic gap between the goalkeeper and the post still remained, and the puck sent to it by Shipachev reluctantly leaked into the net.
And “Ak Bars”, which, instead of shrinking under the pressure of the army, increased the gap, again engaged in their usual business, focusing on defense. And Timur Bilyalov plucked another congratulations from his partners, having coped with a lethal, three-meter throw by Darren Dietz, who put Artem Lukoyanov on the ice with a feint in front of him.
Nothing has changed in the final period. CSKA pressed on, Ak Bars fought back. And the way he fought back made me think of the great boxer Mohammed Ali, his legendary trick – to cling to the ropes, as if exposing himself to fire, but all the time either to avoid blows with the help of all the same ropes, or at least soften them , exhausting the enemy, bringing him out of himself. Pressed against the invisible ropes, Ak Bars felt quite comfortable, including those two minutes when they played in the numerical minority for throwing the puck off the site. On the contrary, it was the Kazanians who created, convincingly destroying the creative efforts of the army five, a chic moment when they brought Dmitry Voronkov one on one.
In the end, CSKA, of course, sent Adam Reideborn to the bench for the sixth field player. And, of course, this move did not bother Ak Bars at all. The third goal Nikita Dynak scored into an empty net.
So this final will have a perfect ending – in the form of the seventh match, which will take place on Saturday in Kazan.
It was in the seven-match confrontation – with Metallurg Magnitogorsk – that CSKA won its previous Gagarin Cup a year ago. True, it was then that he was able to get to the decisive meeting, losing in the series with an almost hopeless score considered at this level – 1:3. In the finals of 2023, Ak Bars climbed out of the pit, inspiring incredible feats.
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