SKA - Dinamo Riga

SKA - Dinamo Riga - 2:3 SO

20 December 2018

In the second match of this 2018/2019 KHL regular season home series, SKA hosted HC Dinamo Riga at the Saint Petersburg, conceding a disappointing 2:3 defeat in overtime. Russian national team players Igor Shestyorkin, Vladislav Gavrikov, Andrei Kuzmenko, Ilya Kablukov and Evgeny Ketov returned to the line-up, with Igor handed the duties as the starting goaltender. Timur Bilyalov protected Dinamo Riga's net.

Within the first minute, Dinamo took a shock lead in Saint Petersburg, as forward Linus Videll pulled to the left wing and whipped a pacey wrister beyond the surprised Igor Shestyorkin. It took a while for our players to get going, but after a slow start, they began to motor towards the latter stages of the period. Taking aim from the high slot, defenseman Anton Belov went top shelf on the goalkeeper, before Nikolai Prokhorkin scored at the doorstep. 2:1 after 20 minutes.

However, in the second stanza, the visitors managed to equalise on the powerplay as Linus Videll caught Igor Shestyorkin napping blocker side. In response, our players laid siege to the opposing net, but thanks to some fantastic goalkeeping from Timur Bilyalov, Dinamo somehow managed to keep the score level.

It was much the same story in the third frame. All of the pressure was coming inside the Dinamo zone, but every time SKA had a glorious scoring opportunity, the goaltender came to the Riga outfit's rescue. On a late powerplay, Nikita Gusev was sure to score when twisting beyond his markers with wonderful skill, however he was denied a certain goal when whipping an attempt into Timur Bilyalov's extended glove.

Dinamo hung on to take the match into overtime, in which Linus Videll found himself clean through and won the game for the away team with his hat trick. 2:3, SKA take one point against HC Dinamo Riga and will now prepare to face HC CSKA Moscow at the Gazprom Arena in the Hockey Classic on Saturday.

Match protocol:

SKA - Dinamo Riga - 2:3 OT (2:1, 0:1, 0:0, 0:1)

Goals:

0:1 Videll (Darzins, Dzerikals), 01.11

1:1 Belov (Datsyuk, Kruchinin), 13.38

2:1 Prokhorkin (Hersley, Gusev), 18.28

2:2 Videll (Alsauskas), 24.31

2:3 Videll (Dzerins), 61.59

Goalkeepers: Shestyorkin - Bilyalov

Shots on target: 33 - 16

Faceoffs: 32 - 22

Hits: 19 - 15