Big crowd for season finale

22 March 2025

Kunlun Red Star 1 Avangard Omsk 5

Another season came to its end – and we had more than 5,000 fans at Arena Mytishchi to thank our guys for their efforts through the campaign. It’s one of the biggest crowds we’ve had in our adopted home, and it was genuinely moving to see how many of our players have made a real connection with the team’s supporters this season.

There was a roster of home-made banners all around the arena paying tribute to our players – from long-serving goalie Jeremy Smith to December signing Joey Duszak. And it added up to a valuable reminder that sport is more than a matter of goals scored and points accrued. It’s about people; the communities and personalities that form around the game. This season is ending sooner than we would like, but today’s final game still had something of a carnival atmosphere to it.

Unfortunately, despite that sense of occasion, events on the ice did not go our guys’ way. The Dragons suffered an early setback when Avangard took the lead in the second minute, but came back strongly. Spencer Foo and Tyler Graovac came close to tying the game, then our captain found the net midway through the first period. This was an end-to-end play; Patrik Rybar blocked a shot on our net and Hudson Elynuik hared down the left to launch the counter. As he entered Hawks’ territory he moved the puck inside for Adam Clendening who, in turn picked out Foozy. But our captain still had plenty to do, wheeling away from the slot to find a shooting lane from an acute angle before beating Nikita Serebryakov.

At this point, the game was very much alive. Indeed, the first power play of day went to us a few minutes, offering a great chance to get ahead. Instead, a breakdown on our offense opened the door for Giovanni Fiore to breakaway and score his second of the night. The, just before the intermission, we got a nudge from a familiar face: Nail Yakupov, who began this season in the Dragons’ Lair, scored Avangard’s third. Oddly, this was Yakupov’s 70^th game of the regular season – a KHL record that will be hard to beat in a 68-game campaign. The trick, of course, is that he move to Omsk came after he was ever-present in a busy start to the season for us. We’d played two games more than Avangard at the time of the move, allowing Nail to pile up a couple of extra appearances.

Yakupov’s goal also ended Rybar’s game. He didn’t return after the intermission, making way for Smitty. The second period saw some good play from Red Star, including an enterprising attempt to reduce the deficit from Austin Wong. This Dragon spread his wings, batting down an elevated puck in the slot before spitting a fiery shot that Serebrayov did well to beat away. There were further chances for Tomas Jurco, and Duszak almost connected with a tantalizing cross-ice feed to the back door, but Avangard’s lead remained stubbornly intact.

And the third period brought frustration and disappointment. Elynuik left the game with an injury after he was tumbled on his way to goal. No call from the officials. Then a harsh delay of game call on Smitty brought an Avangard power play goal, effectively ending the contest with 12 to play. Adding insult to injury, Fiore completed his hat-trick with a second short-handed goal, this time into an empty net.

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