Rybin’s dribbling, Shvets-Rogovoi’s shot on his knees and Sexton’s slalom

25 September 2018

The third week of the regular season was full of spectacular moments. KHL.ru is proud to present you its weekly ranking.

Top 10 goals

We begin our countdown of the best ten goals of the third regular-season week with a fantastic breakaway by Sochi’s forward Eric O’Dell in the game against Metallurg Magnitogorsk lost 1-2 in spite of the stunning effort by the Canadian veteran. The Severstal – Vityaz game played on Saturday didn’t show many goals as it ended with a 2-1-win in favor of the home team, but the spectators weren’t disappointed: the eighth strike of the week is an incredible goal scored by Artyom Shvets-Rogovoi with a shot from his knees after skating past a pair of Severstal defensemen. We’ll get back to this game later. Not long ago, Sergei Mozyakin celebrated his 800^thpoint in the KHL; his no-look pass to Dennis Rasmussen was a perfect excuse to celebrate the landmark in style.

The fifth place was stormed – in all senses – by Anton Slepyshev; the CSKA forward outskated the Amur defense and defeated the goalie one-on-one for a gorgeous way to score his second of the season. Jokerit conjured up our fourth-best effort of the week with a perfect team play finished by Geoff Platt, once again against Metallurg. CSKA is featured again as Mikhail Grigorenko and Kirill Kaprizov moves like a hot knife through butter against Kunlun Red Star for the third-place play. The top-two, however, is monopolized by sublime individual efforts. Dan Sexton ran away from Sochi defense like a 100-meter man to score a huge goal on Konstantin Barulin and finalize a blistering breakaway for the silver medal. But the gold medal went to Cherepovets as the forever-young Maxim Rybin didn’t fear going one against four, skating past defensemen one after the other in the already mentioned Severstal vs. Vityaz game.

Top 5 saves

In fifth place is Metallurg’s Artyom Zagidulin. The young goalie was a big part in Metallurg’s win against Sochi – in spite of Eric O’Dell’s huge goal – and Nikita Tochitsky and Vadim Khlopotov probably wondered for some time how they could not get the puck past him. Likely, the same thought tormented Ak Bars forwards Artyom Lukoyanov and Alexei Potapov after failing to score on Neftekhimik’s Ilya Ezhov.

Kristers Gudlevskis had a tremendous game against Admiral and saved his team in many moments, in particular in the dying second of the regulation time to help Dinamo Riga getting the SO win in Vladivostok on Wednesday. We already talked about the game between Severstal and Vityaz, and the game featured not only breathtaking goals but also impressive saves. Just like the one by Dominik Furch, who dive down on the ice to save in style a great chance created by Nikita Komarov. However, the very best of the week was Vityaz’s netminder Alexander Samonov, with a massive stop on his former teammate Maxim Afinogenov.