KHL: Dynamo throw out SKA in six

01 Apr 2013 | Dennis Mende

With a solid 5-1 win on home ice Dynamo Moscow became the first team to make it to this year's Gagarin Cup finals. As during the 2012 Conference finals in the West their victims were SKA St. Petersburg. Man of the match was Marek Kvapil who scored a hat trick for the hosts.

Western Conference finals, day 6

Dynamo Moscow (3) - SKA St. Petersburg (1) 5-1

From the very begin it was clear that the guests from St. Petersburg would try anything to force a 7th game in this series and they soon had a surplus in shots on goal but their opponents Dynamo had the better opportunities in the first 20 minutes. First Marek Kvapil was stopped in a 1-on-1 with SKA goalie Ezhov and then again Kvapil appeared in front of Ezhov but missed the net before the puck came back with a strange bounce from the board and Jakub Petruzalek's wrap-around afterwards went just wide.

At 25:05 he hosts were finally able to use one of their big opportunities when Marek Kvapil conquere the puck inside the neutral zone, skated along the right wing, went behind the net and scored with a wrap-around against the surprised Ezhov who was out of position for a moment. Just three minutes later it was again Kvapil who doubled the lead for Dynamo when he fired a one-timer into the left top corner after a perfect pass from the right side by Sergei Soin. The period was not over yet though. First Evgeny Artyukhin was successful for SKA when he used a rebound after a blocked shot by his team colleague Fyodor Fedorov and then Ilya Gorokhov brought two goals between the two teams again. He waited in a half leftposition and scored with a one-timer into the left bottom corner! SKA goalie Ezhov didn't look too good in this situation.

The guests started with a lot of pressure into the third period as they needed at least two more goals but they failed to create real danger in front of Dynamo goalie Yeryomenko. On the other side Marek Kvapil completed his hat trick for Dynamo when he received a brilliant long pass by Jakub Petruzalek at the SKA blue line, skated towards the net and deked out Ezhov to the right to makde it 4-1 for the home side! With more than five minutes left to play in regulation the guests decided to already pull out their goalie for an additional attacker and this was punished by Sergei Konkov who hit the empty net at 55:11. In the end Alexei Sopin had a big opportunity for Dynamo with a blast from short distance that was deflected wide by Ezhov so that the final result of 5-1 didn't change anymore.

In the following Gagarin Cup finals Dynam Moscow will play either against Ak Bars Kazan or Traktor Chelyabinsk who play against each other in the Eastern Conference finals. Depending on the winner in this other series also the home advantage during the finals will be cleared.

Dynamo won the series 4-2