SKA waste three-goal lead against Dynamo

23 January 2025

A three-goal advantage was carelessly thrown away against Dynamo Moscow in Saint Petersburg, as SKA conceded an avoidable 3:5 home defeat in the 2024/2025 KHL regular season.

Our team looked to be in full control early in the second period, however a series of penalties and mistakes gifted Dynamo a way back into the game.

SKA had initially bossed the opening stanza.

Creating shooting lanes with ease, the hosts piled on the pressure against the somewhat frail Dynamo defence, with away goaltender Maxim Motorygin making 20 saves during the maiden 20 minutes alone!

The 22-year-old was proving a difficult challenge to overcome. A combination of Grigory Kuzmin and Nikolai Polyakov just couldn’t tuck the bouncing puck in, before Mikhail Grigorenko could only aim his attempt against Motorygin with the goal practically at his mercy.

Dynamo were mainly waiting for counter-attack opportunities to appear. Yegor Rimashevsky suddenly pulled clean through in the 16^th minute, however he was denied by a wonderful save from SKA’s Yegor Zavragin.

SKA finally broke the deadlock in the first minute of the second stanza on the powerplay.

Grigorenko atoned for his earlier miss, gathering Sergei Plotnikov's intelligent pass to the right of the crease and carefully turning it beyond Motorygin.

One soon became two.

Arseniy Gritsyuk stunned Motorygin a mere matter of 17 seconds later, unleashing a seemingly harmless wrister which was too hot to handle. Buoyed by those two quickfire goals, SKA continued competing on the front foot and taking aim from any angle possible, and our third arrived in the 28^th minute as Ilya Karpukhin’s rocket flew in as a consequence of a wicked ricochet.

Dynamo predicably opted to swap the forlorn Motorygin in favour of Vladislav Podyapolsky. Unfortunately for us, that change had the desired effect for the Muscovites, as they got on the board on the PP through Dylan Sikura’s unstoppable effort from the right circle.

The game had turned on its head. Taking advantage of a wayward pass from Artyom Zemchyonok inside his own zone, Cedric Paquette cut Dynamo’s deficit to one, wiring a firm shot into the far corner from the right circle.

It was one-way traffic at the SKA Arena.

Ex-SKA forward Artyom Shvets-Rogovoi equalised for Dynamo in only the second minute of the third stanza, escaping the attentions of our defence and neatly getting the better of Zavragin with the backhand.

To our dismay, matters soon became even worse.

Dynamo opened up their first lead of the evening in the 47^th minute in really poor circumstances from our point of view. Eluding the static SKA defence, Artyom Chernov connected with a searching pass from deep and knocked the puck under Zavragin’s glove.

A shellshocked SKA had no answer to Dynamo’s rejuvenated play. With around two minutes remaining on the clock, SKA did pull Zavragin for the extra skater as they pressed in a desperate manner, but that only resulted in Artyom Ilyenko hitting the empty net to ice it.

SKA will now prepare to host Salavat Yulaev Ufa on Saturday. Puck-drop is scheduled for 17:00 local time.

Match protocol:

SKA – Dynamo Moscow – 3:5 (0:0, 3:2, 0:3)

Goals:

1:0 Grigorenko (Plotnikov), 20.53 PPG

2:0 Gritsyuk (Zaitsev, Bardakov), 21.09

3:0 Karpukhin (Kuzmin, Polyakov), 27.50

3:1 Sikura (Pylenkov), 29.32 PPG

3:2 Paquette, 36.09

3:3 Shvets-Rogovoi (Gusev, Adamchuk), 41.37

3:4 Chernov (Pylenkov, Weal), 46.53

3:5 Ilyenko (Dzhioshvili), 58.16 EN