MINSK – Yunost Minsk won its second consecutive Belarusian championship and the fifth title overall by defeating Shakhter Soligorsk in the playoff final in seven games.
After winning the 52-game regular season with a 17-point margin before Shakhter, the best two teams met in the final again.
Yunost faced little challenge in the first two rounds, sweeping both HK Vitebsk and Sokil Kyiv 3-0. Also Shakhter felt little resistance against Neman Grodno (3-0) and HK Gomel (3-1).
While Yunost Minsk has been known as a top team in the league for many years, the name of Shakhter Soligorsk might sound new to many hockey fans.
The arena in Soligorsk was constructed in 2008 and the club was founded one year later for the 2009-2010 season. It is the farm team of KHL club Dynamo Minsk, which sent several players to Soligorsk.
The opening games showed that it would be a hard fight for both teams. Six of seven games ended with a one-goal margin, four went to overtime and two of them to a second extra time.
Shakhter took the lead in the series twice, but after four games in was 2-2 and Yunost shocked Shakhter in the fifth game, winning 7-1. Shakhter didn’t give up and moved to Minsk to Dynamo’s old arena for the sixth game to win 3-2 and to set up a seventh game on Saturday.
Also this game was allocated, this time to the Minsk Arena that opened in January in view of the 2014 IIHF World Championship. 15,000 fans filled the building more than for Dynamo Minsk’s KHL games.
The fans didn’t regret their coming and they saw Maxim Slysh getting Yunost the lead after 44 seconds into the middle period, but Evgeni Kovyrshin tied things up nine minutes later during a two-man advantage.
Another exciting game with plenty of offensive action (50-38 shots on goal in favour of Yunost) went into overtime. Shakhter was close to win the game during a power play, but Yunost survived and it was Artem Senkevich who shot Yunost to its second consecutive title with his breakaway goal at 73:32.
Of course Senkevich received the best player award while goalkeepers Vitali Velinsky (Yunost) and Finn Mika Oksa (Shakhter) were named the other stars of the game.
The Belarusian Extraliga hosted a record number of 14 teams this year including two entries from Latvia and one team from Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Sokil Kyiv reached fourth place behind the two finalists and HK Gomel while the Latvian teams missed the playoffs. Liepajas Metalurgs finished tenth, the Dinamo Riga Juniors eleventh.
The Dinamo Riga Juniors won the final series for the Latvian national title 4-1 against Liepajas Metalurgs. The last game on Monday ended with a 3-2 overtime victory for the team from the capital.
The teams entered the Latvian league for the semi-finals where Dinamo defeated Ozolnieki 3-1 while Liepaja defeated its second team 3-0. Latgale Daugavpils and Lithuanian team Energija Eletrenai were the other teams that qualified for the playoffs after a 30-game regular season.
Sokil Kyiv and Berkut Kyiv will play for the Ukrainian title. The final series begins on Tuesday.
MARTIN MERK |
