Monday, September 30, 2013

The SKA Report: Taking Moscow

SKA's week began with a road game in Croatia against Medvescak, and unlike the home opener, the result was a little different.  The first period opened with Ilya Kovalchuk scoring to give SKA the lead, but Mathieu Carle tied the game.  Ryan Vesce gave Medvescak the lead with a goal in the second period and Matt Murley upped the lead to two to open the third period.  Late goals by Roman Cervenka and Kovalchuk forced the game into overtime, giving SKA at least a point in the standings.  However, they would not get any more, as Vesce had the deciding goal in the shootout to hang a loss on Alexander Salak.  Friday saw SKA travel to Moscow and their bitter rivals Dynamo Moscow, who have knocked out SKA in each of the last two playoff meetings.  Evgeny Skachkov and Maxim Chudinov put SKA up 2-0 before Leo Komarov pulled Dynamo within one to close the period.  Komarov would tie the game in the second period before SKA took over in the third period.  Artemy Panarin would score back-to-back goals, and Anton Malyshev and Patrick Thoresen would add on to give SKA and Salak a 6-2 victory in Moscow.  Sunday, SKA stayed in the Moscow region to take on Vityaz.  A scoreless first period gave way to both teams exchanging goals, Tony Martensson for SKA and Anton Korolyov for Vityaz.  Yury Koshkarov would open the third period with a goal for Vityaz, but Kovalchuk's goal halfway through the period would force overtime.  Nothing was settled there, so a shootout was needed, where Kovalchuk scored the winner, putting SKA over the top 3-2 and made a winner of Ilya Ezhov.

SKA travels east to Nizhny Novgorod to face Torpedo and will conclude the week on Thursday with a tilt in Kazan against Ak Bars.  Roman Cervenka is tied for the league lead in points and Kovalchuk is tied for second in the league in goals, with Viktor Tikhonov one spot behind.  Salak is third in GAA.

No comments:

Post a Comment