SKA Saint Petersburg began their interconference second round playoff matchup with Eastern Conference foes Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg with a setback already working against them. Their marquee blueliner Alexander Nikishin (Carolina Hurricanes, 69th overall, 2020 NHL Entry Draft) was injured in the decisive Game 5 against Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod and was ruled out by bench boss Roman Rotenberg in advance, though not placed on the official injury list. As such, they began this series absent their leading point tallier and significant minutes eater, as well as a vital leader to the team. His absence would most certainly be felt, as it did not feel as though they created many quality chances for themselves and looked somewhat toothless. They would outshoot Yekaterinburg 32-26 and win the faceoff battle 28-20, but fell into a 2-0 hole which they would eventually erase via goals by Marat Khairullin and Sergei Sapego. However, just over a minute later, Denis Barantsev would put Avtomobilist back in the lead and that would be all she wrote, as SKA would drop Game 1 3-2 to the underdogs in this matchup.

It should be interesting to see if Nikishin is back before this series is up, given that the incident that took him out of Game 5 against Torpedo looked quite ugly, but he appears to be being handled on a day-to-day basis. If nothing else, he will be a necessary component to this team winning their first Gagarin Cup since 2017. We shall see what his status is going forward, but it would seem unlikely that he’ll be back in time for Game 2 on Tuesday as SKA suits up for another home game. Let us see if they can pull one out of their hat, as the cards do seem stacked against them. They did open last round with a loss to an inferior opponent before eventually launching into a gentleman’s sweep, but the circumstances were less dire than they are currently.