Mozyakin Sets Up 3 Goals to Power Magnitogorsk to a Win

The Matchup:

Metallurg 

Magnitogorsk 

(15-0-6-5)

vs

Barys
Astana

(11-0-5-10)

Players You May Recognize

Nik Antropov, Victor Hedman, Andrew Hutchinson, Nigel Dawes, Brandon Bochenski, Dustin Boyd

Recap

Despite some struggles since the KHL's Euro Hockey Tour break, Metallurg Magnitogorsk should be perfectly fine as long as they get to play Barys Astana once a week.  Barys is the only team that Metallurg has defeated since the break, and both wins have been decisive victories with 5 goal outputs.

I kinda wish the Pens still had O'Reilly...
or were playing hockey...

Magnitogorsk got off to a very quick start, taking the lead within the first minute of the game thanks to a Cal O'Reilly one-timer from the slot.  Sergei Mozyakin recorded his first of 3 assists on the opening goal, which helped him pass Alexander Radulov for the KHL's scoring lead.  After dominating the first five minutes, Magnitogorsk ran into some penalty trouble when Evgeni Malkin was called for slashing.  Momentum shifted to Barys, who couldn't score during Malkin's penalty but drew another penalty on Mikhail Yakubov immediately after.  Their second powerplay needed just 35 seconds to score as Nik Antropov found Maxim Spiridonov alone across the crease for an easy tap-in goal.

That would be the only goal Barys scored though as Magnitogorsk fought back to gain momentum with their home crowd and got a little help from some poor goaltending as well.  With 5 minutes left in the 1st period, Nikolai Kulemin held the puck near the goal line by the Barys net patiently.  After surveying his passing options (there were none), he took a bad angle shot which somehow slipped into the net for a 2-1 lead.

Hedman won the battle of 71's here.

Barys put together another effort to tie the game late in the period after Cal O'Reilly was called for hooking and then given a 10 minute misconduct for arguing the call (Abuse of Officials, officially), but Magnitogorsk's penalty kill held strong.  The first 10 minutes of the 2nd period were filled with penalties and chippy play as Sergei Gonchar got into a scrum with Mihail Grigoriev.  The bad blood continued as Malkin went around the offensive zone and cross-checked 3 different players (no penalties were called) and then got into a small wrestling match with Victor Hedman which led to roughing minors for each.

Once tempers subsided on both sides, Metallurg went to work at putting the game away during the rest of the 2nd period.  Dmitry Kazionov scored 2 goals and Sergei Gonchar added a powerplay goal in a 5 minute span to take Barys completely out of the game with a 5-1 score.  After the 5th goal, Barys pulled their starting goalie Lassila and put in backup Pavel Poluektov.

Poluektov didn't let a shot in for the rest of the game and the 3rd period went very quickly and quietly as both teams appeared to be ready to move on.  There were more instances of YMCA, the wave, and thunder sticks being used in the crowd than quality chances on the ice.

Final Score:  Metallurg Magnitogorsk 5   Barys Astana 1

Metallurg improves to 16-0-6-5 and Barys drops to 11-0-5-11.

Player Notes

Evgeni Malkin - Malkin showed a lot of fire in this game with quite a few physical altercations.  He played well but certainly seemed more intent on causing chaos with his body than the puck today.  He only managed 3 shots, an unusually low total for him, and recorded just 1 assist in only 19:50 of ice time (also an unusually low number).  He was only 8 for 18 in faceoffs as well.  My guess is someone woke up on the wrong side of bed today.

I think he was going for the Mighty Ducks jersey pullover

Sergei Gonchar - In 19 minutes of ice time, Gonchar scored a powerplay goal and assisted on another in the easy win.  He was not tested much defensively, but was flawless in his own end when necessary.  He also showed quite a bit of fight today, getting into a couple shoving matches.  He had a talk with the refs after the 2nd period and was laughing with them though, so things couldn't have been too bad.

Others - Nikolai Kulemin was named Magnitogorsk's player of the game with only 1 goal recorded...I'm not sure why.  Mozyakin is the KHL's leader in points with 37 right now, followed by Alexander Radulov with 36 and Evgeni Malkin in 3rd with 33 points.  Cal O'Reilly only played 9:42 because of his 10 minute misconduct.  Head coach Paul Maurice was clearly unhappy and sat him much longer than necessary.

Next Game:  11/25, 6am EST vs HC Yugra

Links:

ESPN has added a schedule and standings page for the KHL: http://espn.go.com/nhl/khl

Magnitogorsk has a twitter page: https://twitter.com/MetallurgMgn

Go to onhockey.ru for all of your streaming needs.

If you want highlights for the games, check out http://www.youtube.com/user/KHLofficialvideo.