SKA dealt dryly with Torpedo – Sport – Kommersant
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The victory of SKA in four matches ended its confrontation with Torpedo in the second round of the play-offs of the Fonbet Kontinental Hockey League. The second meeting in Nizhny Novgorod was won by the army team from St. Petersburg with a score of 5:3. Their opponent in the Western Conference final will be determined in the series between CSKA and Lokomotiv, in which Muscovites are leading 2:1 so far.
Even with that rather serious difference in the size of the budget, the depth of the squad, the level of performers and the cup experience that separated Torpedo and SKA, few people bet on a quick and dry victory for the Petersburgers. Nizhny Novgorod made such a strong impression not only in the regular season, but also in the starting play-off series with Dynamo, that it seemed that they would fight with the army team. In principle, the Avtozavodtsy butted heads and twice lost just one puck away – 1:2 with overtime and 4:5. But the first match at home, again, with a very good game, they gave one wicket – 0:4. And with a total score of 0:3, it was already difficult to fight against the powerful SKA.
What can I say if the team of Roman Rotenberg painlessly endured even the loss due to damage received during the second match, their captain and best striker Dmitry Yashkin.
The first link without him, of course, sank, but the second shot, whose representatives scored all the goals in the third, key meeting. Yashkin did not reach the fourth either, in which Emil Galimov again replaced him in the top three with Nikita Gusev and Marat Khusnutdinov.
Already in the first seconds, the army team broke the rules and gave odds to Torpedo, which was used by the majority. Sergei Goncharuk threw the puck on horseback so that Dmitry Nikolaev, who concreted his goal in the last match, was forced to sign his own impotence. Moreover, soon Honcharuk once again caught the SKA goalkeeper by surprise, cunningly throwing from under the defender. And on this game for Nikolaev ended. Rotenberg released Vladislav Podyapolsky instead of him, thus deciding to shake up the entire team, which had clearly overslept its debut.
The shake-up was good for her, and the Petersburgers decently loaded Torpedo goalkeeper Ivan Kulbakov. Podyapolsky did not get bored either, but it was still much hotter in the Nizhny Novgorod zone. As a result, after several saves, Kulbakov also faltered, who could not cope with a direct throw from defender Roman Rukavishnikov.
The guests could, in hot pursuit, even the score at all, although 1:2 by the end of the first period suited them perfectly. SKA returned to the game and started the second quarter in high spirits.
“Torpedo” after the break had to defend a lot, and Kulbakov – to spin and spin in the “frame”. The army team missed the opportunity to excel in the five-on-four format, and then their attacking impulse gradually faded away. The hosts seized the initiative, and already Podyapolsky was in the center of events. And when Vladislav Firstov threw him into an empty corner, the goalkeeper miraculously saved SKA. St. Petersburg survived in the minority after the removal of Khusnutdinov, and in one of the episodes, Nizhny Novgorod hit the crossbar. But at the end of the second segment of the meeting, the guests also responded with Damir Zhafyarov’s “one-to-one” exit, which defender Anton Sizov helped Kulbakov to stop at the cost of a foul.
The implementation of this majority was already postponed to the third period, and Valentin Zykov was obliged to close the pass of Marat Khairullin to an empty net. But he missed, but the Torpedo striker Vasily Atanasov, in equal numbers, performed a much more difficult trick with the puck and sent it under the bar with an uncomfortable hand. SKA again rolled back to the minus two distance, but more than 16 minutes remained at their disposal. And Galimov pretty quickly reduced the backlog to a minimum, when his pass to the penny, thanks to a successful rebound from Mikhail Orlov’s skate, unexpectedly turned into a goal. The army team added more aggression, and Gusev punched Kulbakov for the third time with a killer flick.
It was only the 54th minute of the match, and the hosts had already squandered all their advantage and, it seems, were frankly upset. The guests felt it and finished off the Torpedo. The winning goal in the series was scored by SKA defender Igor Ozhiganov, who showed enviable promptness under other people’s nets. Well, Khairullin deprived Nizhny Novgorod of the last hope for salvation, after which it did not even make sense for them to change the goalkeeper to the sixth field player. Igor Larionov’s young team, of course, many thanks and respect for a bold and interesting season, but such a monster of the Western Conference as SKA is too tough for them yet.
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