Sakhalin Sharks will meet with HC SKA-Varyags in St. Petersburg

HC Sakhalinskiye Sharks will start the away series in St. Petersburg with a match against the youth team of SKA-Varyags. Both games will be played at a convenient viewing time — 13:00 Moscow time (21:00 local time). This was reported in the press service of the island hockey club.

Rival

SKA-Varyags is one of the youth teams of the SKA St. Petersburg club system. Its main goal was and remains the successful adaptation of the guys from the SKA school at the MHL level and their further transition to the leading teams of the system – SKA-1946 in the MHL, SKA-Neva in the VHL and SKA in the KHL.

This is one of the youngest teams in the League, from which no great achievements are expected – most of the SKA-Varyag players are only 16-17 years old. The team is managed by a young coaching staff headed by Anton Kadeikin – he became the team’s mentor during the season.

After the change of coach, there was no jump in the team’s game. In their last match, SKA-Varyags broke the 11-match losing streak by defeating Primorsky Typhoon (2:1) in overtime. However, it is also impossible to call them a simple rival – only in the course of this series the Varangians imposed a fight and lost only one puck to the Red Army, Spartak and Captain.

By mid-January, the young St. Petersburgers had won nine games and lost seven more in overtime, placing them seventh in the Western Conference Silver Division standings with 25 points in 40 games.

About myself

The Sakhalin Sharks fell into the trap of important matches – the current seven-game losing streak in games with direct competitors in the fight for the play-in has strongly rolled them back from the top three. However, the last chance to catch on and fight still remains, because there is almost a third of the regular season ahead. The Sharks are currently 6th in the Silver Division with 34 points in 37 games.

What Sakhalin residents can really boast of this year is the game of their leaders – Alexander Morozov right now shares the first place in the list of the best MHL snipers (23 goals) and is among the top ten scorers of the League (38 points), and Pavel Kolotygin closes the top ten scorers -defenders (22 points). Anton Danilov (33 points) and Timofey Barsukov (35 points) can join the race of top scorers.

Rival Leaders

The main strike force of SKA-Varyags is oversized junior forwards Ignat Lutfullin and Mark Slivchenko. The first is the best scorer (25) and sniper (10) of the team, the second is also the best sniper (10). For both, this is the first season in the MHL. Both have a decent shot and know how to find a good moment. Team leader Alexei Leontiev will help them do this, for whom this season is already the second in the form of SKA-Varyags.

Meeting history

The teams met each other 12 times – the score was 7:5 in favor of SKA-Varyags. However, in terms of goals scored, the Sharks have a slight advantage – 37:35.

In the current championship, the rivals have not yet met each other. But last season, the teams won once at home and away – 2:4 and 5:4 in St. Petersburg, 6:3 and 2:4 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.