Jurco’s return can’t halt Red Star skid

3 March 2025

Dinamo Minsk 6 Kunlun Red Star 2

The good news? Tomas Jurco is back in action. Our Slovak forward, who has a team-leading 20 assists among his 29 points this season, returned from injury to help the guys in Minsk.

The bad news? Well, most of the second period. Down by one at the intermission, the Dragons were simply blown away in the middle frame. Dinamo rattled in five more goals before a late power play effort from Luke Lockhart stopped the rot. It wasn’t that the home team was overwhelmingly dominant – Red Star had its chances as well. However, it was one of those nights when everything went right for them, and not much worked out for us.

Apart from Jurco’s welcome return, we also had Jan Drozg and Joey Duszak back from suspension. Patrik Rybar continued in goal after making 37 saves against Dynamo at the weekend.

And Rybar was at it early in this one, making a big save to deny Yegor Borikov. However, Red Star had its chances. Stepan Zvyagin, on loan to us from Dinamo, produced a neat play before shooting against the post. And two former Minsk players, Duszak and Tyler Graovac, combined for another good opportunity. However, the only goal of the first came at the other end when Vadim Moroz converted the first power play of the game. Our bench challenged that one, claiming a hand pass in the build-up, but had no luck on appeal.

Nonetheless, despite four minutes of penalties against us, we were still in the game after an even first period. However, things went astray in the second.

Rybar started with another point blank save to deny Moroz, but Dinamo still got an early goal. At the other end, Graovac saw his one-on-one halted by Andrei Tikhomirov before things fell apart at the midway stage. Given that Dinamo was playing its second game in two days, there was every reason to anticipate the home team would slow down as time went on. Instead, a burst of three goals in five minutes either side of the 30-minute mark pushed the score to 5-0 and left us with a mountain to climb.

In the midst of that onslaught, Jeremy Smith came into the game to replace Rybar. But Dinamo continued to press and Vitaly Pinchuk added a sixth in the 38^th minute.

It was too late to save the game, but never too late to salvage some pride. Right before the second intermission, Lockhart struck on the power play. Luke followed up a rebound from his own shot to score from between the hash marks. Then, 30 seconds after the restart, Yaroslav Likhachyov found another belter of a shot from the top of the right-hand circle. That, too, came on the PP as our guys challenged Dinamo’s status as the KHL’s top penalty killing unit.

While the game was done, we still managed to win the third period thanks to that Likhachyov snipe. And there was a further victory when Doyle Somerby came to blows with Josh Brook. Their Canadian defenseman was comprehensively beaten in that fight – something that might play on a few minds before we return here on Sunday looking for revenge.