The SKA Report: Back to Work

The break is over in the KHL, as four teams took the ice today.  SKA will wait until tomorrow to take the ice and attempt to pad the six point lead in the Western Conference.  This week, they travel to Yaroslavl to take on Lokomotiv on Thursday and will see a familiar face in Evgeny Artyukhin on Saturday, as they face his new team Atlant.  SKA will be home the following week for games every other day beginning Monday.

Before the season, it was all about Ilya Kovalchuk, and certainly, the contract numbers with SKA rival those of his New Jersey Devils numbers.  However, he isn't the only player producing, as the pick up of former league leading scorer Roman Cervenka has been an equally good signing, and combined with Viktor Tikhonov having a breakthrough year, SKA is a team to watch.  Of course, you need goaltending, and Alexander Salak has been just as valuable of a signing as Kovalchuk, providing a 1-2 punch in net with Ilya Ezhov.  Improvements are needed, as they are with every team, and certainly, it begins with consistency, something that hasn't always been there with SKA.  Some of it is key players such as Kovalchuk and Kevin Dallman missing time due to injuries, and some of it is secondary scoring, with Tony Martensson and Patrick Thoresen being the primary threats there.  It's nice of them to score, but they are so much better when the trio of Kovalchuk, Cervenka, and Tikhonov are all at their best.  Defensively, they play better than the sum of their parts, and that begins with Dmitry Kalinin and +/- leader Maxim Chudinov.  Dallman will be an offensive threat from the blue line once he gets healthy, and that should take some pressure off of the forwards to produce.