In continued pursuit of their maintenance of the top spot in the KHL’s Western Conference for the ideal 2024 Gagarin Cup playoffs seeding, SKA Saint Petersburg were able to get two of three victories this past week. Both victories ended up being hard-earned and arduous in different ways and the defeat was an exciting matchup, but one to forget for their squad. Four different goalscorers (Valentin Zykov, Vasily Glotov, Sergei Tolchinsky, and Mikhail Vorobyov) got on the stat sheet in the first two periods for SKA in their road matchup against strong interconference foes Salavat Yulaev Ufa on Sunday, February 4th as they seemed to control pace and possession in the matchup throughout much of it before the home team reared back in the final stanza, with Alexander Sharov netting two goals in a row and Dinar Khafizullin tallying one. Ufa’s comeback efforts would ultimately fall short, but they gave the defending Continental Cup champions quite a fight and a fright.

On the next stop of their Eastern Conference road trip, SKA put on quite an offensive performance, but also had one come back the other way. Avangard Omsk would win Tuesday, February 6th’s matchup 9-5, with Reid Boucher putting on quite a show as he tallied a hat-trick to bring his goal total to 42 for the 2023-24 KHL season (at the time of writing, he leads the league with 44, nine goals ahead of second place Nikolai Goldobin of Spartak Moscow). While a few players had multi-point games for SKA, the absolute erosion of their defense in this game overcomes that. In a sense, Alex Galchenyuk taking one on the button from Nikolai Kholodilin in their brief physical exchange that sent both to the box for roughing was a good analogy for this game on SKA Saint Petersburg’s end. Roman Rotenberg’s group gave you something to be entertained by as a fan, but they did not come out of it on the right side of the result.

The last game on their Eastern journey had SKA faced up against one of the weakest teams in the KHL in Barys Astana on Thursday, February 8th. This game was quiet until the final frame, when Barys blueliner Nelson Nogier got on the board early into the third period for the game’s first goal. To that point, SKA Saint Petersburg had had a pretty significant advantage in time controlling the puck and shots on net but had nothing to show for it. However, this was not a death knell, as it would turn out. D/Carolina Hurricanes prospect Alexander Nikishin (who has racked up the accolades as of late, as he, per HockeyNewsHub on Twitter/X, became the first ever KHL defenseman to have put up consecutive 50 point seasons and was top of the most recent league player rankings) would score within the last minute to send the game to OT. Also per HNH, this goal was very significant for the individual responsible in that Nikishin set the record for single season goalscoring by a SKA Saint Petersburg blueliner and marked his FIFTH goal inside the last minute in 2023-24, another single season team record (in the KHL era). That said, they still needed to procure the win, and they eventually did in the shootout, with Marat Khairullin putting home the game-winning shot. Not every victory is going to be pretty, even against weak opponents, and SKA has been on the losing side of a fair number of frustrating games of this nature this season (despite their ascension to their current spot at second place in the league standings/Continental Cup race) so they will take the two points. However, I am sure that, in a manner akin to John Tortorella’s dissatisfaction with victories where a comprehensive, dominant team performance was not visible throughout, the coaching staff and players will want better group form going forward.

Elsewhere in the Western Conference, HC Sochi sought to keep up their respectable recent form to end the year, while RW Matvei Michkov (Philadelphia Flyers) was looking to bounce back after being benched and healthy scratched. Far from playing a conservative game in response to head coach Dmitry Kokorev’s action, the 19-year-old phenom was all over the ice, playing his usual style to extreme efficacy and tallying 1 goal and 1 assist as Sochi defeated Vityaz Moscow Region on the road, 4-3, on Tuesday, February 6th. Sochi would then take on Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod in another intraconference road matchup. Michkov would keep Torpedo netminder Adam Huska attentive in this game, putting up seven shots on goal and forcing him to make some tough saves. Michkov would have something to show for his efforts, with another 1g+1a game. However, the “Leopards” would ultimately fall to their hosts 5-3, after an eruption of 3 goals begun by Nikita Artamonov (the 2024 NHL Entry Draft eligible star’s second of the night) by the hosts would disrupt the competitiveness of the then-intriguing game.

SKA and Sochi face off for the fourth and final time this year tomorrow (2/11). Despite their respective under-/overachieving in the early stages, their seasons ended up being very different, with SKA near the top as they usually are and Sochi appearing to be minnows. However, for now, HC Sochi hold the edge in the series, 2-1, by way of two 5-4 victories in the first two matchups in contrast with SKA’s 7-2 win in the most recent game. On top of that, their form has been quite impressive recently, as has been Michkov’s answering to the bell. It is all but a wrap that HC Sochi can only play spoiler at this point in the year, but what a moment it would be to take the season series with a road victory against Michkov’s club who loaned him out to a city he did not want to return to (as well as the team they acquired Marat Khusnutdinov from as a piece in the deal centered on Borna Rendulic) in their recently opened biggest ice hockey arena in the world. For full visual aid, here is a video of Michkov and HC Sochi taking in the sights themselves. While this season might not have ended up being the fairytale it looked like it might shape up to be in the first couple of months of the season, there is still a chance for a phenomenal story to be told in this game. I very, very much look forward to tomorrow’s matchup and seeing how this unlikely rivalry ends this season.