All four series back to 2-1

After four days of the second round of the KHL playoffs, all four series are at 2-1. Today, Dinamo Minsk reduced its deficit against Traktor with an emphatic 8-0 victory, while Dynamo Moscow won 3-1 in Kazan to move closer to Ak Bars. 

Goal glut gets Minsk off the mark

Dinamo Minsk 8 Traktor Chelyabinsk 0 (3-0, 3-0, 2-0)

(Traktor leads the series 2-1)

After leading in the last minute and losing, then blowing a 3-0 advantage to lose again, Dinamo built a margin that Traktor could not hope to claw back. The Belarusians roared back into this second-round Gagarin Cup playoff contest with a crushing 8-0 victory in Minsk, leaving Traktor reeling.

Yet, lopsided as the scoreline was, this result owed plenty to home goalie Vasily Demchenko as well as the clinical finishing of Dinamo’s forwards. Demchenko stopped 33 shots; Traktor’s Zach Fucale and Vladislav Sukharyov faced just one more between them in a game that was close in every component except scoring.

The early stages were characterized by penalties: after 70 seconds, Dinamo got on the power play. Traktor killed that, but almost immediately we were into four-on-four hockey as Sergei Kuznetsov and Artyom Blazhievsky sat for roughing. During that passage, Vadim Moroz opened the scoring, bursting down the right, beating Koromyslov and firing in a powerful shot. Almost immediately, Josh Brook doubled the lead. Dinamo was up 8-1 in shots and 2-0 in goals in the sixth minute.

Soon, Moroz was back in action with another highlight reel play to bamboozle Sergei Telegin before making it 3-0 in the ninth minute.

So far, so bad for Traktor. But the visitor renewed its attacking efforts and managed to have the better of the latter half of the period. Only a goal was missing as Benoit Groulx’s team seemed ready to set out on that comeback trail once again.

However, the fightback was undermined in the 25th minute when Logan Day took a penalty. Dinamo converted the power play, Vitaly Pinchuk making it 4-0 with yet another fine piece of play.

That was the end of Fucale’s evening, and the inexperienced Sukharyov came into the game. He immediately pulled off a big save, but would allow goals from Chris Tierney and Daniil Lipsky before the end of the second period. The latter benefitted from a goalie error to make it six.

Although this series has been characterized by Traktor comebacks, a 6-0 margin seemed too great to challenge. And so it proved. Although the visitor continued to look for at least a consolation goal or too, there was no way past Demchenko. At the other end, Yegor Borikov added a seventh early in the final frame before Ilya Usov had the final word in the 53rd minute.

After all that, the series was right back in the balance. Traktor still leads, but Dinamo will believe it can tie this up on Friday before the battle returns to Chelyabinsk.

Muscovites get back in contention

Ak Bars Kazan 1 Dynamo Moscow 3 (0-0, 0-2, 1-1)

(Ak Bars leads the series 2-1)

As in Minsk, so in Kazan. Dynamo Moscow didn’t produce quite the rampant scoring that its Belarusian colleagues managed, but a 3-1 success over Ak Bars saw Alexei Kudashov’s team right back into this second-round series.

In the first two games, Dynamo lost the battle on its own slot. In response, Kudashov switched up his defensive pairings while his forwards remained unchanged. Vladislav Podyapolsky continued as starting goalie. Ak Bars made no changes from game two.

The visitor made a busy start. There were no big scoring chances, but Dynamo regularly had the game in the Ak Bars zone and tested Timur Bilyalov with regular shots. The home response saw an attempt from Mitch Miller and a quick breakaway from Nicolas Petan: on both occasions, Podyapolsky had the answers. The best moment of the opening stanza was a classy save from Bilyalov to deny Dmitry Rashevsky’s one-timer. A similar move gave Dmitrij Jaskin a chance at the other end but he tried to bring the puck to the slot before shooting wide of the target.

The Ak Bars bottom six looked particularly lively, with Artur Brovkin going close. In the closing stages the game opened out a little, with breakaway chances at each end: Dylan Sikura for Dynamo, followed by a two-on-one rush for the home team.

After a goalless first period, the opening goal arrived at the start of the second. Dynamo got the first power play of the game and Maxim Dzhioshvili got away from Konstantin Luchevnikov on the slot to beat Bilyalov in the 24th minute.

Almost immediately, came close to a reply. Podyapolsky lost sight of a long-range effort but no home player could punish that error. And there were more chances when Eric O’Dell and Nikita Dynyak combined effectively. Dynyak, in particular, looked a likely source of goals but just as the home team was tightening its grip, a fluffed line change presented Jordan Weal with a second goal. By the end of the middle frame, Kazan had outshot its visitor 12-6 but trailed 0-2.

At the start of the third, Ak Bars found itself in a crisis: a two-on-one rush for Dynamo saw Max Comtois produce a great feed for Rashevsky to make it 3-0. With a solid lead, the visitor played it safe. The Blue-and-Whites were happy to allow Ak Bars possession in center ice, but quickly halted any incursions over the blue line. A power play helped to use up some time for Dynamo as well as Ak Bars squandered a chance to get back into the game.

There were more chances, the best coming when a couple of passes unpicked a tight defense and set up Ilya Safonov for a shot. Podyapolsky kept that one out.

Another power play in the 54th minute saw Ak Bars play six-on-four. The plan worked, with Miller’s point shot making it a one-goal game. However, there was no more to come – not least because of another home penalty in the closing stages that helped Dynamo close out the win.