Goal festival in St. Petersburg

08 Mar 2013 | Dennis Mende

SKA and Dynamo were able to get the important first win during their series openers of Gagarin Cup quarterfinals. Khabarovsk and Riga won their Nadezhda Cup duels.

Gagarin Cup quarterfinals

Western Conference

SKA St. Petersburg (1) - Severstal Cherepovets (5) 7-4

With their goals until 25:48 home players Mikhail Varnakov, Viktor Tikhonov and Patrick Thoresen made it look like an easy walk-through for SKA with the equalizer in between for Severstal scored by Nikita Alexeyev. Instead the outsiders from Cherepovets started a huge race to catch up and Mikhail Anisin and Evgeny Ketov (2) turned the result around completely for them. After the 3-3 SKA took the questionable decision to change their goalies. Ilya Ezhov came in for Ivan Kasutin but not even two minutes later he was also beaten. At 35:49 Tony Martensson tied the match for SKA before Viktor Tikhonov scored the game winner for them at 53:12. With empty netters Maxim Afinogenov and Tikhonov - for his hat trick - made it a deserved win for the favourites.

SKA lead 1-0 in the series

CSKA Moscow (2) - Dynamo Moscow (3) 0-3

The derby was decided before it even really started. CSKA goalie Rastislav Stana had a complete off-day and let through two goals past the glove hand by Alexei Sopin and Sergei Konkov before Konstantin Gorovikov made it 3-0 for Dynamo at 16:21 with a shot that was deflected. This was also the moment when Stana had to leave his net. New man Ilya Proskuryakov kept his net clean until the end of the game but the CSKA offense lacked precision and couldn't endanger the shutout for Dynamo goalie Alexander Yeryomenko who only had to make 21 saves - an extremly low number for an away game in playoffs.

CSKA lead 1-0 in the series

Nadezhda Cup semifinals

Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg - Amur Khabarovsk 1-2 OT

Alexander Yunkov tied this semifinal series for Amur with his overtme winner at 67:49. Before Dmitry Lugin for Amur and Denis Sokolov for Avtomobilist had scored.

Series tied 1-1

Dinamo Riga - Dinamo Minsk 7-4

Kevin Lalande in the MInsk goal showed another very, very shaky performance against Dinamo Riga and this was punished by the hosts who earned their second win of the series. Oskars Cibulskis, Arvids Rekis, Paul Szczechura and Roberts Bukarts for Riga and Janne Niskala and Sergei Drozd for Minsk scoredfor a 4-2 lead by the Latvians after 40 minutes. Roberts Bukarts, Jamie Johnson and Juris Upitis made it even 7-2 for Riga who showed deadly precision in front of the guest net before Drozd and Niskala used their second goal of the day each to make the result look a bit more friendly for the team from Belarus.

Riga lead 2-0 in the series