Riga thrash Minsk in first Dinamo duel

They were last in the KHL during the regular season but despite this Avtomobilist continued their surprisining winning streak in Nadezhda Cup, KHL's "Cup of Hope". The hosts only needed 02:38 before Alexander Streltsov opened the score for them. Amur took over the initiative in the middle period and were rewarded with a double by Alexander Yunkov. With two early goals at the start of the third period the trio Rastislav Spirko - Alexei Simakov - Denis Sokolov turned the game aroudn again in favour of Avtomobilist. While Spiriko and Simakov had a goal and an assist each, Sokolov earned an assist in both situations. Still this was by far not the end. Evgeny Korotkov scored the equalizer for Amur at 51:44 that sent the game to overtime. There Avtomobilist needed the third overtime until Branislav Mezei scored the late, late game winner at 116:42, just nine seconds before the end of their power play.

Interesting side fact:

Just nine days after Severstal and Lokomotiv set a new record for the longest KHL game of all times with 58:48 minutes of overtime, the match between Avtomobilist and Amur became the second longest with just two minutes less played.

In the other match of the day Latvian side Dinamo Riga received Dinamo Minsk. Due to their better position in the regular season and the good performances in the first round of Nadezhda Cup the team from Belarus were the favourites but they fully disappointed today. Roberts Bukarts, Arvids Rekis and Oskars Cibulskis for Riga and Goeff Platt for Minsk had scored for a 3-1 lead for the home side after 40 minutes. This one continued with a new man between the posts for Minsk who substituted the very shaky Kevin Lalande with young 19 year old MHL goalie Mikhail Karnaukhov. This seemed to give the guests a little more confidence and Kim Hirschovits cut the lead to just one at 42:28. The hope for them ended very soon though when Martins Karsums, MHL forward Juris Upitis (2) and Gints Meija made it a 7-2 (!) beating. Especially for Karnaukhov this was a disappointing KHL debut. 

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