With the road trip curse broken, a perpetual rival vanquished, SKA-neftyanik is heading home.

A SKA's impressive performance in Irkutsk revealed that two fiascoes in Pervouralsk and, especially in Novosibirsk, were no more than a couple of misfires of no consequence. There's no hiding the fact, that Baikal Energia have been improving with a replacement of a head coach lately, way on the roll, and ready to give our team a good thrashing (the last win they had against SKA was tallied in March of 2016) All in vain, our players proved once again they are still running the rings around their traditional  and neighboring rivals.

Even though SKA slackened off and allowed a goal to Baikal at the onset, they slowly but surely were keeping up the pressure, having set a two-goal lead by the end of the first half. After the break Baikal didn't stand much of a chance to "turn the tide", quite the opposite, SKA players kept controlling the game till the very end and, but for an extraordinary play by Grigoriy Lapin, a Baikal's netminder, our opponents may have faced a one-way scoring downpour. Yes, Grigoriy was fantastic throughout the game, but he couldn't stymie two more goals in his net. Aleksey Nichkov became the Man of the Match, having scored a couple and Denis Potemin celebrated his 33 year old birthday with an impressive goal off the corner shot.

Now, we are looking forward to a couple of home ice games against Kuzbass and Yenisey, a well-set leader of the regular championship, on the 18th and 21st of this month, consequently.