Battling Dragons keep season alive

5 March 2025

Spartak Moscow 2 Kunlun Red Star 3 SO

The trip to Spartak was also a visit to the last-chance saloon for our guys. Defeat in regulation here would mean a mathematical end to any prospects of making the playoffs. Instead, a brave performance brought a shoot-out win to extend the story for at least another day.

After allowing six goals in each of our last three games there were some changes on defense. Yury Pautov and Alexei Kozhevnikov stepped down, Ian McCoshen returned. And, off the ice, there was good news for another of our D-men: Jake Chelios and his wife Madelyn celebrated the birth of their daughter Georgia Fiore yesterday. With a win already, she’s something of a lucky mascot for the team!

The first period might have gone badly wrong for the Dragons. Alexander Pashin’s early goal had us behind the eight ball, and then we encountered penalty trouble. Indeed, we had just three seconds on the power play before a penalty on Tyler Graovac cancelled out that advantage. Later, our guys twice found themselves on the PK – and twice produced shorthanded goals to take a lead into the first intermission!

Midway through the session, Doyle Somerby was assessed a hooking minor. Spartak’s PP fell at the first hurdle: the Dragons immediately claimed possession and launched a three-on-one counter. Luke Lockhart took responsibility himself, firing a shot in off the crossbar to tie the game.

Then, in the 18^th minute, another home power play went awry. Two Spartak players paused to admire the puck in center ice and Colin Campbell whipped it away to make another counterattack. The covering defenseman had to choose between blocking a potential shot or cutting off a pass to Alexander Sharov in the center, but ended up doing neither as Campbell fired KRS in front.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only instance of history repeating itself in this game. Just as Pashin scored in the second minute of the opening frame, so he struck again two minutes in the second period.

And that proved to be the last goal in regulation. Much of the subsequent drought was down to some excellent goaltending from Smith. On another busy night for our goalie, he came up big to deny Pavel Poryadin, stop a deflected shot from Alexander Belyayev and get a strong pad behind a close-range effort from the same player.

At the other end, Jayden Halbgewachs carved a path to goal and was poised to shoot when an excellent covering challenge from Daniil Ivanov halted his progress. Later, in keeping with the day’s general theme, it took a desperate lunge from a home defenseman to deny us another golden short-handed chance. Three shorties in one game would surely have the statisticians scurrying to their record books.

Early in the third, Spartak had the puck in our net once again. This time, though, Pavel Tkachenko’s redirect was called back for a high stick and it remained 2-2. There were chances for us to win it in regulation: Spencer Foo cut a swathe through the home D, only to be halted on the slot by goalie Dmitry Nikolayev. And Nikolayev made another good stop to deny Stepan Zvyagin after a two-on-one break with Jan Drozg. However, neither team could find a winner in regulation and the game went to overtime.

That, in itself, was significant. A point from today’s game ensured that our playoff hopes remained at least theoretically intact – at least until Torpedo plays Avangard on Thursday. Meanwhile, our guys were close to winning it in the extras. Halbgewachs surged down the middle and saw Nikolayev beat his shot away before the home goalie denied Joey Duszak from the rebound. Then Sharov went close after a defensive error from the Red-and-Whites. At the other end, Smith continued his excellent performance, denying Poryadin once again as the game moved on to a shoot-out.

The shoot-out wasn’t short of incident either. When Tomas Jurco stepped up for our fifth and final attempt he had to score to keep us in the game. He beat Nikolayev to send the game to sudden death. Then home forward Sergei Lukyantsev produced a goal under similar pressure before Tyler Graovac restored our lead. Finally, Smith thwarted Lukyantsev and victory was ours.