SKA vs Torpedo NN. Will the car manufacturers be able to fight the championship leader?
The next game week of the KHL regular championship will end with a match in St. Petersburg. On Sunday, February 18, hockey players from the local SKA and Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo will take to the ice at the newest SKA Arena.
Having left behind the initial failures, the St. Petersburg club is rushing at full speed towards the championship following the results of the regular season. It is the St. Petersburg club that now, in terms of gameplay, looks noticeably preferable to its main competitors, which is eloquently proven by the team’s latest results. In the last ten matches, Roman Rotenberg’s team took 18 points out of a possible 20, while the leader of the Eastern Conference, Magnitogorsk Metallurg, managed to score only 13 points over the same period of time. Thus, at the moment, SKA is the sole leader in the KHL summary standings, with 91 points scored, having a three-point advantage over the capital's Dynamo and four over Metallurg.
The schedule of the final matches of the championship plays into the hands of SKA hockey players. Three matches will be played at home, and the only trip for the army team is to Minsk, where the St. Petersburg club traditionally plays successfully. In their last games, SKA was almost perfect in defense, having conceded once each against HC Sochi and Lada and managed to keep a clean sheet in the match against Salavat Yulaev. Nikita Serebryakov, who came from Admiral during the season, became the full number one. The goalkeeper already has 6 clean sheets, which cannot but please St. Petersburg fans on the eve of the start of the playoffs.
Torpedo NN
While the St. Petersburg club is performing noticeably stronger in the second half of the championship, the automakers, on the contrary, have seriously slowed down after the New Year. However, the Nizhny Novgorod club solved the main task, confidently qualifying for the cup stage of the championship. Now the automakers are balancing between fifth and seventh place in the West, currently occupying sixth place in the standings. Torpedo has 74 points, Severstal is two points higher, and the capital's army team is three points lower.
The lack of tournament motivation affects Torpedo's results. In February, Igor Larionov's team played six matches, managing to win only two victories in these games. At the same time, the level of the opponents was quite passable, with the exception of Dynamo Moscow, to which the car manufacturers lost at home 1-2, the rest of the teams were from the second half of the standings. To some extent, the injury of Vasily Atanasov crippled the team. The young forward became the main discovery of the season in the KHL, but has not played since the beginning of January, having received serious injury in a game against Kunlun.
Our Expert Predictions & Analysis on SKA vs Torpedo NN
SKAHaving left behind the initial failures, the St. Petersburg club is rushing at full speed towards the championship following the results of the regular season. It is the St. Petersburg club that now, in terms of gameplay, looks noticeably preferable to its main competitors, which is eloquently proven by the team’s latest results. In the last ten matches, Roman Rotenberg’s team took 18 points out of a possible 20, while the leader of the Eastern Conference, Magnitogorsk Metallurg, managed to score only 13 points over the same period of time. Thus, at the moment, SKA is the sole leader in the KHL summary standings, with 91 points scored, having a three-point advantage over the capital's Dynamo and four over Metallurg.
The schedule of the final matches of the championship plays into the hands of SKA hockey players. Three matches will be played at home, and the only trip for the army team is to Minsk, where the St. Petersburg club traditionally plays successfully. In their last games, SKA was almost perfect in defense, having conceded once each against HC Sochi and Lada and managed to keep a clean sheet in the match against Salavat Yulaev. Nikita Serebryakov, who came from Admiral during the season, became the full number one. The goalkeeper already has 6 clean sheets, which cannot but please St. Petersburg fans on the eve of the start of the playoffs.
Torpedo NN
While the St. Petersburg club is performing noticeably stronger in the second half of the championship, the automakers, on the contrary, have seriously slowed down after the New Year. However, the Nizhny Novgorod club solved the main task, confidently qualifying for the cup stage of the championship. Now the automakers are balancing between fifth and seventh place in the West, currently occupying sixth place in the standings. Torpedo has 74 points, Severstal is two points higher, and the capital's army team is three points lower.
The lack of tournament motivation affects Torpedo's results. In February, Igor Larionov's team played six matches, managing to win only two victories in these games. At the same time, the level of the opponents was quite passable, with the exception of Dynamo Moscow, to which the car manufacturers lost at home 1-2, the rest of the teams were from the second half of the standings. To some extent, the injury of Vasily Atanasov crippled the team. The young forward became the main discovery of the season in the KHL, but has not played since the beginning of January, having received serious injury in a game against Kunlun.
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