Heavy home setback to Spartak

8 January 2025

SKA suffered a heavy setback against Spartak at home in the 2024/2025 KHL regular season, conceding five unanswered goals to lose 0:5.

Following two important consecutive triumphs over CSKA and Vityaz at the SKA Arena, our players were full of confidence ahead of this game, but they were ruthlessly punished for an overwhelming amount of dreadful defensive turnovers.

German Rubtsov opened the scoring in the concluding minute of the first period after one of those avoidable mistakes from SKA, shooting into the empty net with Pavel Moisevich helpless.

That goal set the tone for the afternoon.

Ansel Galimov doubled Spartak's lead in the 25th minute with an almost identical goal. Familiar face Ivan Morozov then grabbed a vital third for the away side, firing past Moisevich from the doorstep moments after exiting the penalty box.

Moisevich was pulled in favour of Artemiy Pleshkov following the third conceded goal. However, the flow of the game didn't change, with Spartak quickly tallying a fourth on the counter-attack through Galimov.

The clean-through Nikolai Goldobin subsequently put the match well and truly out of sight in the 34th minute when calmly shooting between Pleshkov's pads.

The same player thought that he had made it sixth for Spartak at the start of the third period, but his tap-in at point-blank range was disallowed for goaltender interference.

Pleshkov refused to concede another as he pulled off a handful of tough saves with Spartak regularly skating through 1-on-1. The final chance of the day fell to SKA in the dying moments, as Matvei Korotky could only strike the left post when connecting with an intelligent feed from Ivan Demidov.

SKA will now prepare to face Dynamo in Moscow on Saturday. Puck-drop is scheduled for 17:00 local time.

Match protocol:

SKA - Spartak - 0:5 (0:1, 0:4, 0:0)

Goals:

0:1 Rubtsov (Yefremov, Pashin), 19.27

0:2 Galimov (Pashin), 24.28

0:3 Morozov (Ruzicka, Poryadin), 29.08

0:4 Galimov (Pashin), 32.21

0:5 Goldobin (Loktionov), 33.53

Goalkeepers: Moisevich/Pleshkov - Zagidulin

Shots: 71 - 53

Shots on target: 39 - 31