KHL - Round Up - August 25, 2017

Mozyakin stars in Metallurg win Metallurg Magnitogorsk 2 Traktor Chelyabinsk 1 (1-1, 0-0, 1-0)
Sergei Mozyakin lifted Metallurg to victory in the first South Ural derby of the season, pocketing a goal and an assist as Magnitka edged Traktor 2-1.
Metallurg started with an unexpected defeat at home to Avtomobilist, and Traktor quickly set nerves jangling when Paul Szczechura got his second goal of the season to put the visitor up in the fourth minute.
Mozyakin – who else? – tied the scores. Jan Kovar played the puck into the Traktor zone, where a bad bounce took Artyom Borodkin out of the game. Mozyakin needed no second invitation, stealing in behind the discomforted D-man and winning a close-up duel with Vasily Demchenko.
Mozyakin was also involved in the game-winner. As Traktor battled to kill a late penalty, the forward saw his shot saved and scrambled to relative safety. Then, on the blue line, the captain started the next phase of offense: pass to Matt Ellison in the corner, feed out front to Tomas Filippi and goal! Metallurg had the winner, with less than 90 seconds to play.


Lada finds winning road
Lada Tolyatti 3 Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg 1 (0-0, 2-1, 1-0)
Lada bounced back from its opening loss to Traktor and beat Avtomobilist 3-1. After a goalless first period, Carter Ashton put the home team in front early in the second. Kirill Lyamin tied it up for Avtomobilist on a power play in the 27^th minute, but Alexander Streltsov reinstated Lada’s advantage before the second intermission.
Avto had been in this situation two days earlier, trailing 1-2 after 40 minutes in Magnitogorsk. On that occasion, the Motormen found four unanswered goals; today they could only manage three shots in the final session. Stanislav Bocharov added a third for Lada to get his team’s season up and running.

Kontiola at the double as Loko impresses
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl 5 Slovan Bratislava 1 (3-1, 1-0, 1-0)
Lokomotiv brushed aside Slovan in emphatic style to record its first victory of the season – but the Slovaks suffered a second heavy defeat in succession.
The game got off to a lively start: Slovan took a penalty in the second minute, and Petri Kontiola converted the power play with a one timer from between the hash marks off a Max Talbot feed. But Slovan hit back quickly and Pavol Skalicky tied the game in the sixth minute.
But the outcome was effectively settled in the 17^th minute when Lokomotiv scored twice in 10 seconds. Vladislav Kartayev made it 2-1 on 16:02, forcing the loose puck home after Artyom Ilyenko went close. Then, on 16:12, Kontiola got his second of the night, firing home a wrister from the top of the circle. Yegor Korshkov and Dmitry Lugin added further goals as Loko eased to victory.
For the home team, it was a resounding return to winning form after a shoot-out loss against CSKA; for Slovan, it’s already looking like it could be a long, hard season.

Three goals in two minutes destroys Dynamo
Dynamo Moscow 1 CSKA Moscow 6 (0-0, 1-6, 0-1)
A blistering second-period performance blasted Dynamo out of this game as CSKA claimed a crushing derby win. The opening stanza was scoreless, although that owed more to the excellence of Alexander Yeryomenko in the home goal than any competitive play further up the ice. The goalie made 16 stops in the first period, but CSKA solved him early in the second.
Three goals in less than two minutes at the start of that middle session decided the outcome of the game. Mat Robinson, a Dynamo defenseman last season, picked the perfect moment to open his CSKA account with a wrist shot from the blue line. Next came Anton Burdasov, another summer signing, shooting over the glove from out wide. Dynamo called a time-out, but could not halt a rampant CSKA. Mikhail Grigorenko and Roman Lyubimov passed their way through the home defense; Grigorenko applied the finish.
Andrei Kuteikin’s power play goal got the host on the scoreboard, but there was little prospect of a fight back. Andrei Svetlakov and Andrei Kuzmenko stretched the lead to 5-1. CSKA had 12 shots on goal in the second period, and scored five goals; Yeryomenko headed to the bench early. Konstantin Okulov added a sixth in the last minute, compounding Dynamo’s misery as CSKA celebrated a memorable derby day.

Shestyorkin denies battling Jokerit
SKA St. Petersburg 2 Jokerit Helsinki 0 (1-0, 0-0, 1-0)
Ilya Kovalchuk and Sergei Shirokov kept up their scoring streak to lift SKA to a hard-fought win over Jokerit. Kovalchuk’s four in three games gave SKA an early lead with a well-worked power play goal. Advancing down the right, he exchanged passes with Sergei Plotnikov before firing in a laser of a wrist shot from a tight angle inside the circle. With just eight minutes played, the home team looked comfortable and continued to boss the opening period without grabbing a second goal.
But the middle session was completely different. Jokerit poured forward, piling up the pressure on Igor Shestyorkin’s net. The young goalie made 20 saves in the period to protect his team’s slender lead. It took another power play goal, late in the game, to finally secure the points for the defending champion. Sergei Shirokov was the scorer, making it three in three for him as he converted Yegor Yakovlev’s feed in front of the net. It was relief for SKA, and frustration for a Jokerit team that failed to score when the momentum flowed its way.  

Semenov strike and Saprykin heroics give Vityaz victory
Dinamo Minsk 0 Vityaz Podolsk 1 (0-1, 0-0, 0-0)
Veteran defenseman Alexander Semenov scored for the second game running – and his effort secured Vityaz a narrow win in Belarus. It took just seven seconds for Semenov to convert the power play after Dinamo’s Andrei Stepanov was penalized in the 11^thminute. Maxim Afinogenov won the face off, Igor Golovkov played the puck along the blue line and Semenov smashed home a shot past Jhonas Enroth.
But the rest of the game was all about Vityaz goalie Igor Saprykin. The 25-year-old was in unbeatable form, singlehandedly denying Dinamo during a second period storm and continuing that form into the final stanza. He finished with 36 saves, Vityaz finished with three points.