Winning start to 2025

3 January 2025

Kunlun Red Star 3 Vityaz Moscow Region 2 OT

The New Year holidays are a time for magic – and Dragons’ captain Spencer Foo conjured up a memorable moment to win this one in overtime. His goal snapped a 2-2 tie and made it four wins in a row after Red Star’s strong finish to 2024. Joey Duszak had another eye-catching game, adding a goal and an assist to move to 12 (2+10) points in 10 games.

It might be a new year, but this was a familiar line-up. Once again, Mikhail Kravets opted to stick with a winning team and made no changes at all to the roster that took an OT verdict at Torpedo before the holidays.

The first period was frustrating. Red Star consistently created scoring chances but struggled to get past Maxim Dorozhko in the Vityaz net. He finished the session with 11 saves, protecting the one-goal lead that the visitor earned midway through the frame when an unlucky deflection sent Ivan Vorobyov’s shot past Jeremy Smith. Vorobyov caused a ruckus with his last KHL goal, celebrating directly in front of the Spartak bench; today he wisely opted not to push his luck any further.

The final seconds of first rather summed up the whole session. Kunlun got on a great breakaway, with Yaroslav Likhachyov and Joe Duszak generating an odd-man rush. But Dorozhko came up with the save to frustrate our guys and send the team to the locker room down by one.

Undaunted, the Dragons kept up the pressure. Tyler Graovac had a couple of good looks against one of his former clubs, while Likhachyov and Danny O’Regan had Dorozhko scrambling into action again. The well-deserved breakthrough came midway through the session: Colin Campbell with the face-off win, Duszak claimed the puck at the point before driving down the boards and around the net to beat the visiting goalie at last. Our all-action D-man was involved again when another break put him through on goal. This time, though, he was sent crashing into the net under Ruslan Pedan’s challenge – to the surprise of most in the arena, there was no call against the one-timer Dragons’ blue liner.

After 40 minutes, the stats suggested that Red Star was the more likely team to go on and win it. We were outshooting our visitor and had a slight edge in terms of attacking possession. The third period began with a dangerous wrister from Jayden Halbgewachs but, once again, Dorozhko held on. Then, midway through the session, Vityaz got back in front on a goal from Buchelnikov as the visitor’s most dangerous line finally got the chance it was looking for.

However, the Likhachyov-O’Regan combination had also offered plenty of menace in this game and that was the pair that brought salvation with three minutes left. Yaroslav brought the play down the right-hand channel and spotted Danny dropping back into space near the top of the left-hand circle. A well-placed pass invited a shot, and O’Regan did not disappoint, firing an unstoppable wrister past Dorozhko to make it 2-2 and drag the game into overtime.

We’d been here before, of course. Our previous game against Torpedo saw the Dragons battle back twice before winning in the extras. If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it: captain Foo came up with the decider – and it was a bit special. A Duszak stretch pass released Spencer into their zone, where he took Yegor Rykov for a quick dance around the slot before spinning after from the stumbling defenseman and whipping a shot past Dorozhko to seal our fourth win in a row.

The result lifts Red Star ahead of Vityaz into ninth place, and puts us four points behind Torpedo in eighth. Monday’s visit of Amur could see us match a club-record five-game winning streak and move closer to those playoff spots.

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