Hockey Classic. SKA - CSKA

Hockey Classic. SKA - CSKA - 1:4

22 December 2018

In the 2018/2019 KHL regular season, SKA hosted HC CSKA Moscow at the Gazprom Arena in Saint Petersburg for the second Hockey Classic which was held inside the large stadium. Head coach Ilya Vorobyov made a few changes after the defeat to Dinamo Riga on Thursday, notably replacing Igor Shestyorkin in net with Swedish goalkeeper Magnus Hellberg. Artyom Zub, Anton Belov, Alexei Kruchinin, Pavel Datsyuk and Sergei Plotnikov were in the first line together. Ilya Sorokin was CSKA’s starting goaltender.

The Gazprom Arena was packed, but during the opening exchanges, SKA struggled to gain a foothold in the game. All too often our players were losing the puck in the neutral zone to the opponents, and when they found space on the counterattack, CSKA were causing our defence an all manner of problems. Unfortunately, CSKA eventually scored just after a Vladislav Syomin penalty had expired, as Linden Vey bundled his own rebound over the line. Nikita Gusev could have grabbed an instant equaliser, but he missed the target at point blank range with the goalkeeper down and out.

At the start of the second stanza, Nikolai Prokhorkin couldn’t beat Ilya Sorokin on a break away, and that miss was promptly punished at the other end. Bursting clear of the SKA defence, 21-year old forward Pavel Karnaukhov found himself alone with Magnus Hellberg, and he calmly notched CSKA’s second. Sadly, the deficit then grew to three, as Kirill Kaprizov’s fumbled shot on the doorstep deceived Magnus Hellberg. In serious trouble, SKA spent the rest of the period in the attacking zone, however apart from when Nikolai Prokhorkin was denied at point blank range, our players created very little clear opportunities.

Despite requiring goals, and plenty of them, SKA failed to maintain a prolonged spell of pressure in the third frame. For the most part, the visitors calmly kept control of the game, but with three minutes remaining, Nikita Gusev finally got SKA on the board with a huge slap shot on the powerplay. Magnus Hellberg was subsequently pulled for the extra skater, however to SKA’s dismay, that only resulted in Jannik Hansen hitting the empty net to ice it. 1:4, SKA lose in the Hockey Classic to CSKA Moscow in Saint Petersburg.

Match protocol:

SKA – CSKA – 1:4 (0:1, 0:2, 1:1)

Goals:

0:1 Vey (Okulov), 13.00

0:2 Karnaukhov (Svetlakov), 23.19

0:3 Kaprizov (Vey, Grigorenko), 29.32

1:3 Gusev (Prokhorkin), 57.43

1:4 Hansen, 59.32

Goalkeepers: Hellberg – Sorokin

Shots on target: 19 – 21

Faceoffs: 33 – 25

Hits: 28 – 12