Game five. SKA – Avtomobilist

Game five. SKA – Avtomobilist – 4:5

25 March 2024

SKA saw their 2023/2024 KHL Gagarin Cup playoff campaign come to a bitter end at the quarter-final stage, suffering a narrow 4:5 defeat to Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg in Saint Petersburg to consequently lose the series 1-4.

Just like in three out of the four preceding matches of the series, Avtomobilist struck first blood.

Alexei Makeev had been searching for a teammate, but his pass was inadvertently deflected past the helpless Nikita Serebryakov by Vasily Glotov.

The opponents bossed the early stages. Taking advantage of SKA’s somewhat sloppy defensive play, the away side were presented with odd-man rushes with alarming regularity, and Serebryakov had to be on his game to prevent Avtomobilist from potentially putting the game to bed.

SKA equalised against the run of play in the 10^th minute, with Arseniy Gritsyuk whipping a firm wrister past away goalkeeper Evgeny Alikin. Buoyed by that goal, our players made a vast improvement to their approach, applying pressure on the Avtomobilist defence and calling Alikin into action 17 times in the period.

However, Yekaterinburg retook the lead in the concluding minute of the frame on the powerplay.

Once again Makeev was the hero for Avtomobilist, as his low backhander from a seemingly impossible angle cruelly slid between Serebryakov’s pads.

SKA initially struggled to generate attacking momentum in the second stanza, but a wonderful powerplay goal from Mikhail Vorobyov provided the game with ignition in the 32^nd minute.

Lurking unmarked on the right circle, Vorobyov was picked out intelligently by Marat Khairullin and sent his one-timer into the unguarded near corner.

We didn’t have to wait long for our go-ahead goal either. After a pair of top stops from Serebryakov, Khairullin sped away on the counter, took aim and caught Alikin cold with an unstoppable wrister.

Incredibly, our fourth arrived a mere matter of six seconds later, as Arseniy Gritsyuk whipped the puck under the goalkeeper when pouncing on a rare Avtomobilist mistake at the back. The Ural-based outfit predictably made the call to swap the forlorn Alikin in favour of 23-year-old Vladimir Alikin immediately after that goal.

That decision did have the desired effect for Avtomobilist. On their second powerplay of the evening, former SKA forward Alexei Byvaltsev cut our lead in half, aiming his wrist shot over Serebryakov’s blocker with Makeev effectively blocking our goalkeeper’s view.

Our lead disappeared completely inside 21 seconds of the third period.

Serebryakov was equal to the first shot unleashed by imposing defenseman Nikita Tryamkin, but he couldn’t do a thing against Nick Ebert’s rising shot from the blue line. Slack, unorganised defensive play was again our Achilles heel.

A final defensive error sadly proved decisive.

Andrei Obidin who had somehow escaped the attention of our defence following a faceoff draw inside our zone, cut to a shooting position and netted his team’s fifth with Serebryakov impeded by one of his own players.

Two late powerplays gifted SKA a guilt-edged opportunity to force overtime. But, largely thanks to their brave play and willingness to block shots, Avtomobilist held on to secure qualification for the semi-finals of the competition.

Match protocol:

SKA – Avtomobilist – 4:5 (1:2, 3:1, 0:2)

Goals:

0:1 Makeev (Golyshev), 03.20

1:1 Gritsyuk (Sergeev, Sapego), 09.09

1:2 Makeev (Kizimov, Obidin), 19.28 PPG

2:2 Vorobyov (Khairullin), 31.05 PPG

3:2 Khairullin, 33.19

4:2 Gritsyuk (Galchenyuk), 33.25

4:3 Byvaltsev (Kizimov, Obidin), 38.47 PPG

4:4 Ebert, 40.21

4:5 Obidin (Barantsev, Khripunov), 51.40