One gets the feeling that lately Dynamo Moscow has been playing with a kind of doomed desperation, going into each match as the last and decisive battle. Which, of course, brings intrigue to a rather predictable championship and adds interest to the games. Dynamo is a strong, united team capable of taking on any team. And not just to give, but also to earn.
The previous meeting between the Whites and Blues and SKA-Neftyanik in Krasnogorsk did not end in the best way for the Khabarovsk team. It was the first defeat in the championship, which pushed the army team to second place in the standings, forcing them to follow Arkhangelsk’s “Vodnik”, which had not been defeated before the recent match in Khabarovsk. It is clear that the people of Khabarovsk wanted revenge. Well, Dynamo tried again to prove that they deserved the top spot in this championship.
The first half was kind of a swing. Dynamo Moscow entered the game in high spirits, SKA, in turn, tried to take the initiative in this game from the first minutes and played very high, almost at the very gates of the opponent. Risky, given the usual way of Muscovites – a very tight defense, through which it is almost impossible to break through, and sharp counterattacks as soon as the opponent stretches his formations.
The guests opened the scoring first. In the 11th minute, Vladislav Tarasov did it and Almaz Mirgazov brought him to the ball. SKA stepped up the pressure and within ten minutes secured five corners and one free, but they couldn’t convert a single standard. Alan Dzhusoev equalized in the 22nd minute. In the 28th minute Vladimir Kalanchin increased the lead and in the 31st minute Dynamo equalized. The Army team had the chance to take the lead in the 35th minute, but Yuri Shardakov couldn’t beat the keeper with a 12-yard throw. In the 43rd minute, Almaz Mirgazov scored, and in the 44th minute, Alan Dzhusoev equalized again. The teams went to the break with the score 3:3.
In the second half, the same Almaz Mirgazov scored in the 58th minute. In the 65th, Tuomas Määttä scores 4:4. After a little over three minutes, SKA gets the right to a penalty, then the army captain does not miss. The turning point of the match was the 6th goal against Roman Chernykh. After that, only SKA scored. The final score of the match is 8:4 in favor of the team from Khabarovsk. It should be noted that Tuomas Määtä scored a hat-trick, Vasily Granovsky scored a red card a minute earlier, jumping out of the penalty area. It’s good that it was retired with right of replacement, otherwise the owners would have had a hard time. In turn, Evgeny Ivanushkin also received a 10-minute penalty for his comments on the work of the referees.
- My team played very well today. It’s always difficult to play in Khabarovsk. Despite the time zones, despite the level of the opponent. Today, we showed very good hockey in all respects, in all components. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing to complain about his team. A little disappointed, yes. But, it happens. If in Irkutsk we lacked movement in the second half, today in the second half we had enough. After Irkutsk we talked, talked, and today we went to the second half, we came out of it completely different. We scored, we did a lot of useful things on the pitch, but we didn’t manage to win the match. We have motivation for every game, we don’t look at the standings – we go out and play. If we looked at the standings, we wouldn’t have shown such hockey today. And what about the ranking? We go from game to game, improve our game and prepare for the playoffs. What difference does it make where we start from? I didn’t see that today we were away or playing at home. We showed champion-level play today. What we are. Asset. I cannot name a key moment. There are a number of reasons why we lost today. But that will remain between us, said Evgeny Ivanushkin, head coach of HC Dynamo.
The Army team mentor notes that today SKA tried to apply pressure and he was successful.
- The match was “fire” today. And the opponent offered us a good match, and we ignited this match. And they wanted to illuminate from the first minute. In the first half, we wanted to play with the pressure, as high as possible. There are always risks involved in this. In the sense that if the opponent runs out, then of course they run out into empty areas if they can. Like in football. Now all football teams play quite well, and of course we also practice that. Because it’s spectacular and when you take the ball away from the opponent’s half, you are much closer to the goal to score a goal. We scored three goals in the first half. At the same time, they missed three. In the second half we had to reorganize because if you play at maximum pressure you spend a lot of energy and it was clear that the guys were in a different state. Fifth day since we returned from a long trip and still not recovered. This was visible at times in terms of the movement of certain players. We rebuilt ourselves in defense, in attack we also wanted to play aggressively, but the goal was a psychological moment when we lost 3-4. Here it was important not to deviate from this line, and we did not deviate from it. Returned this match. Somewhere from the sixtieth minute, our fans lit up as much as possible. It was very important to us and it gave us energy and strength. He is our twelfth player and thanks to them for that. In the end, we finished well, – said Mikhail Pashkin, head coach of HC SKA-Neftyanik.
Now SKA-Neftyanik is heading to the road, where they will play against Uralsky Trubnik and Yenisei.