Oops, we did it again!

22 February 2025

SKA St. Petersburg 4 Kunlun Red Star 6

High scoring wins in St. Petersburg turn out to be habit-forming. Early in the season, our 5-4 win here immediately went down as one of our most memorable performances. Today, it was joined in the club’s annals by another spectacular success over Roman Rotenberg’s team.

Like the September match-up, this one saw our guys dig deep to hold on in the third period as a comfortable lead was pegged back to 4-5. Today, though, a shot from the face-off circle found the empty net to give some breathing space. Nothing unusual there? Well, Tyler Graovac’s effort was from the circle next to Jeremy Smith’s net as SKA pushed for a tying goal.

But this game was really decided in a crazy couple of minutes shortly after the midway point. The game was tied at 2-2 when Ian McCoshen found space to advance down the left and fire in a shot from the circle (the attacking circle, this time). His effort seemed to deflect off Yegor Zavragin in the home net on its way over the line. SKA swarmed forward from the face-off, coughed up the puck in front of our net and allowed a three-on-one rush that ended with Jan Drozg firing home the 4-2 goal.

That chased Zavragin from his net, but incoming Pavel Moisevich didn’t have any answers either. His first contribution was to watch as Spencer Foo found Kyle Rau on the doorstep to score his fourth goal and seventh point in seven games. More importantly, Red Star had three goals in 105 seconds and a 5-2 lead.

SKA closed that gap in the third. A power play chance saw the home team play six-on-four until Mikhail Grigorenko made it 3-5. A similar power play came and went without further scoring, but young Matvei Korotky made it a one-goal game in the 53^rd minute. Then, maybe it was overconfidence, or maybe it was a simple misjudgement of the remaining time, but SKA called Moisevich back to the bench and looked to play six-on-five in search of a tying goal. Graovac exposed the folly behind that thinking and gave an advantage that we would not relinquish despite intense pressure from the home team in the closing moments.

Even before that excitement, the game was not short of KRS highlights. Despite falling behind to a Sergei Andronov goal, we tied it up late in the first period thanks to a beauty from Yaroslav Likhachyov. He got clear of the erratic home defense and produced a devastating finish from the right-hand circle, squeezing the puck home between Zavragin and his near post. Then, after a bright start to the second period, Luke Lockhart scored a sensational shorthanded goal to put us up in the game for the first time. He started by stripping an opponent of the puck on our blue line, drove into the heart of SKA territory and pulled off an audacious dangle to send the last defenseman to the hot-dog stand. After all that, ripping a finish past Zavragin was elementary stuff to complete a highlight-reel play in a game stacked with Dragons highlights.