Three goals in three minutes salvage a tie

18 March 2025

Kunlun Red Star 4 Severstal Cherepovets 5 SO

The season might be almost done, but there’s still time for plenty of drama when the Dragons hit the ice. Today’s visit from Severstal was the classic ‘game of two halves’. In the first 30 minutes, Kunlun struggled; in the latter half, Red Star shone. It all added up to a 4-4 tie before a loss in the shoot-out.

After the heavy loss at Metallurg, Mikhail Kravets changed things up. On offense, only the Halbgewachs-Graovac-Jurco line survived intact, and that went from first line to third. On defense, Joey Duszak and Yury Pautov made way for Alexei Kozhevnikov and Ziyat Paigin respectively. Jeremy Smith started in goal.

However, those changes did not make much difference early on. Severstal looked much better in the first period and was good value for its 2-0 intermission lead. And things got worse before they got better, with the visitor adding a third midway through the second period.

Although it wasn’t immediately reflected in the scoring, though, our guys were offering more in the second stanza. And eventually there was some reward when Kyle Rau pulled a goal back in the 34^th minute. Rau won an attacking face-off, then took up a good position at the back door to finish a well-worked play around the Severstal zone.

Then came an exhilarating third period. Having seen the way to goal, our guys plugged those directions into their collective sat-navs and launched a blitz on Severstal. Three goals in three minutes early in the third turned this game upside down in spectacular fashion, with Arena Mytishchi rocking in response to some great play.

It started with Doyle Somerby, who stepped up from the blue line to follow Danny O’Regan into the danger zone. When O’Regan dropped off the puck, Doyle fired home his fifth goal of the season and the fightback was on.

Then came a hard-working tie goal: Spencer Foo had Severstal struggling in the corner, Martin Lefebvre kept the play alive on the blue line and then picked out a pass for Colin Campbell between the hash marks. Campbell had plenty to do, but did it in style, turning to sweep his shot beyond Alexander Samoilov for 3-3.

Are you not entertained? There was more to come. Paigin fired a shot into a crowd of players and the puck drop perfectly for Jayden Halbgewachs to put us up 4-3. That’s Paigin’s first point since joining the Dragons, and Jayden’s second goal in three games.

It was a rousing passage of play, and it got the home crowd on their feet. But there were still 13 minutes to play and Severstal found a way back into the game. Andrei Churkin’s goal owed much to a crazy bounce, but it was good enough to force overtime.

The extras produced little incident and this time we had no luck in the shoot-out. Severstal converted two attempts, while Samoilov won each of his duels with our players to give the visitor the win.

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