New year, new tests

3 January 2024

We’re back in action after the New Year break with three games on the road at Western Conference rivals. The Dragons are also looking forward to welcoming Thomas Schemitsch to the lair. The 27-year-old defenseman is due to link up with the guys following his time at the Spengler Cup with Team Canada. While he was there, he had a chance to get the lowdown on life with Red Star from our former defenseman Zac Leslie, who also played for the Canadians in Davos. After ending 2023 on a run of losses, let’s hope our holiday wishes come true and we can start 2024 with a winning run!

Torpedo (a), Jan. 4, 1300 Moscow Time

Last time out: Well, the good news is we’ve scored twice in each of our three meetings with Torpedo this season. The bad news is that they’ve scored more. An OT loss on home ice on Nov. 2 is our best result against Igor Larionov’s team so far this term.

Familiar faces: On our side, Brandon McMillan is up against one of his former clubs. For Torpedo, Igor Larionov Jr and Alexei Kruchinin both had short spells with the Dragons during the lockdown-affected 2020/21 campaign.

Background: This season’s Torpedo is something of an enigma. Igor Larionov’s team can blow hot and cold – sometimes in the same game. We saw that in the final action before the new year. At home to Lokomotiv, Torpedo fell 0-5 behind, only to rally from nowhere and make the final score 3-5. Time ran out before the home team could give Igor Nikitin’s men serious cause for concern, but the unpredictability was visible once again.

And unpredictable is the word. This is a team that can beat in-form SKA and league leader Spartak in back-to-back games. But it’s also a team prone to little skids. It’s a free-scoring team that has been blanked five times this season and found itself on the wrong end of four 0-1 scorelines (one of them in OT!).

In team news, Nikolai Kovalenko is on the injured list. And, improbably, 50-year-old goalie Nikolai Khabibulin is registered and available to play after signing a deadline day deal. Should he feature at any point this season, he would become the oldest netminder to play in the KHL.

Dynamo Moscow (a), Jan. 6, 1300 Moscow Time

Last time out: This was a special one. On Nov. 8 we got an OT win in Moscow, finally defeating Dynamo in the KHL for the first time in our history. That win, courtesy of a Brandon McMillan strike, completed the set: the Dragons could claim a victory against every team we’ve faced in this league.

Familiar faces: Teemu Pulkkinen played 42 games for Dynamo in 2019/20 and 2020/21. He got an assist against his former club when the teams met in November. Goalie Alexander Lazushin is also well-known to Dynamo fans after spending four seasons at the club between 2013 and 2017.

Background: More than most, Dynamo would have been pleased to get to the New Year break. So impressive for much of the season, the wheels started to come off at the end of December. Three straight losses isn’t quite the worst run of the season for Alexei Kudashov’s men, but failure to score in their last two games will be a worry for the Blue-and-Whites.

That said, there’s no shortage of offensive power on a team that features Nikita Gusev, imports Eric O’Dell and Jordan Weal, plus rising Russian star Dmitry Rashevsky. Once they hit peak form again, we can expect to see the Muscovites overcome their recent blip. However, while Dynamo’s recent wobble means little in terms of making the playoffs, it does raise questions about the team’s ability to go deep in its quest to win the Gagarin Cup for the first time since 2013.

CSKA Moscow (a), Jan. 7, 1700 Moscow Time

Last time out: We’ve had some fun at home to CSKA recently, with this season’s 3-2 win continuing a happy sequence of results against the defending champion. However, it’s been less amusing when we’ve met in Moscow: a 0-7 loss in October remains our worst result of the season.

Familiar faces: None

Background: It’s probably an exaggeration to suggest that CSKA, back-to-back champions under Sergei Fedorov, is in any danger of missing the playoffs. Nonetheless, the fact is that the Muscovites are closer to ninth place than first. That’s an unusual state of affairs for this traditional powerhouse, and much ink has been spilt trying to establish what isn’t happening for the team.

The end of 2023 did not bring much relief. A 3-1 win over Severstal on Dec. 30 produced a victorious conclusion, but came after an alarming five-game skid. Defensively things are fairly sound: despite some question marks over goaltending, CSKA has allowed just 103 goals this season and only SKA (97) and Igor Nikitin’s ultra-disciplined Lokomotiv (83) have been more miserly in the Western Conference. However, scoring has been an issue. A return of 126 goals is fairly average and head-to-head battles against this season’s top teams have too frequently seen CSKA held to a single goal. It’s not easy to win when you score once a game and, consequently, the team hasn’t won as frequently as we might expect.

That said, there’s plenty of firepower at Fedorov’s disposal and it’s hard to shake the suspicion that once one or two forwards get hot this team could quickly hit a run of form. Right now, though, this title defense feels like something of a waiting game.