Barys hockey team on the prowl

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KAZAKHSTAN - On Dec. 2, in the 30th match of the first season of the Continental Hockey League (CHL), the Kazakh team Barys from Astana defeated Russia’s Avant-Garde from Omsk 5-2 (1-0, 0-1, 4-1). With that victory, the Astana team jumped to ninth place in the standings passing the Moscow clubs Dinamo and Spartak.

In the first period, Barys’s Maxim Spiridonov scored the first goal in the 19th minute. Avant-Garde evened the score in the second period on a two-man power play.

In the third period a mistake Barys led to Avant-Garde’s second goal when a defenseman scored into an open net. Barys then found the net with a long shot to even the game at 2-2. Less than two minutes later, Barys scored again for a 3-2 lead. In the 58th minute, Barys deposited the puck in the far corner of the net to extend the team’s lead to 4-2. Avant-Garde coach Wayne Fleming then pulled his goaltender for a sixth skater, and with 14 seconds left in the game the team from Astana punished the team from Omsk when Maxim Spirodonov scored his second goal of the game.

At the post-game press conference, Fleming said, “We played well for 50 minutes and then we fell apart. Until we learn that a game lasts 60 minutes, we’re going to see the same results.”

The organisers of the first CHL consider its first season (2008-09) an experiment. The league was formed around the Russian Hockey Superleague and includes 24 teams, 21 Russian and one each from Belarus, Latvia and Kazakhstan.

The league has four six-club divisions. During the regular season, teams play four games against each of the other teams in their division and two games against all teams in the other divisions for a season of 56 matches. The top 16 teams then compete in a post-season playoff series for the Gagarin Cup.

Barys will play its next four regular season Continental Hockey League games on its own ice. The Astana team host SKA (Saint Petersburg) Dec. 6, Severstal (Cherepovets) Dec. 8, Lokomotiv (Yaroslavl) Dec. 10 and Dinamo (Moscow) Dec. 13.

[Kazakhstan-Today news agency, khl.ru web site]