KHL - Round Up - March 01-05, 2018

Attendances up, excitement up!
The end of the regular season brings a new batch of stats to compare with previous years. In 2017-18, the KHL staged 756 games before a combined audience of 4.7 million spectators. That represented a 2% increase in the average attendance. They saw an average of 4.9 goals per game.
The scoring race was won by Ilya Kovalchuk with 63 (31+32) points, one ahead of SKA team-mate Nikita Gusev. Nigel Dawes of Barys came third, with 56 points in 46 games. But the most effective troika in the league, perhaps surprisingly, was Salavat Yulaev’s top line. Linus Omark, Teemu Hartikainen and Joonas Kemppainen combined for 42 goals between them in the regular season – good enough to shoot the Ufa team to second place in the Eastern Conference.


The 100% club
Dynamo Moscow’s failure to make the playoffs this season means there are now just four teams that have played in all 10 KHL post-seasons. Not surprisingly, that group also accounts for seven of the nine Gagarin Cups already won. The flawess four are: Ak Bars Kazan, champion in the first two seasons; Salavat Yulaev Ufa, the team that broke Kazan’s stranglehold; Metallurg Magnitogorsk, finalist in three of the last four seasons; and SKA St. Petersburg, defending champion. Of those four, Metallurg is unique in never placing outside the top eight in the regular season. Unlike the other three, it has only once fallen in the first round of the playoffs – although Avtomobilist will be out to make it two in the coming games.
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl also deserves a mention in this list. The Railwaymen have contested the playoffs nine times, missing out only in 2012 when the team was unable to compete following the air disaster in September, 2011. Jokerit Helsinki and HC Sochi also have a 100% qualification record, but hves played just four seasons in the KHL. At the opposite end of the scale, Amur reached only its second playoff in 10 attempts, while Spartak and Severstal make their first appearances since 2011 and 2012 respectively.


Coming up … The opening round of playoff action continues all week, and the evidence of the first games suggests there’s plenty of excitement to come. Can Severstal continue to push hot favorite SKA as hard as it did in that opening game? Will Teemu Hartikainen keep up his scoring form after posting five points in game one? But there’s one moment that many fans are sure to be waiting for – Sergei Mozyakin’s 500^th career goal. The Metallurg captain moved to 499 on Sunday with his game-winner at Avtomobilist, and another milestone in a great career seems to be just days away ...



All Eastern playoff matchups are set. JHL week in review All Eastern playoff matchups were set during the weekend. On the Western conference there are two spots left.

Eastern conference first round:
1. Mamonty Yugry - 8. Irbis
2. Stalnye Lisy - 7. Reaktor
3. Sibirskiye Snaipery - 6. Belye Medvedi
4. Avto - 5. Tolpar

Top players of the week:
Best goaltender – Amir Miftakhov (Irbis)
Best defenceman – Artyom Volkov (JHC Spartak)
Best forward – Anton Nazarevich (JHC Dinamo SPb)

Top players of February:
Eastern conference
Best goaltender – Mikhail Isayev (Ladya)
Best defenceman – Danil Pyatin (Stalnye Lisy)
Best forward – Nikita Lyubishkin (Sarmaty)

Western conference
Best goaltender – Konstantin Volkov (SKA-1946)
Best defenceman – Denis Nedilko (Amurskiye Tigry)
Best forward – Yegor Filin (Krasnaya Armiya)