St. Petersburg 1, Edinburgh o (overtime)
Sixty minutes of play ended with neither Pekka Rinne nor Henrik Lundquist allowing a single goal. Then, on the first shot of overtime, Brad Richards beat Lundquist to end it and give St. Petersburg a road win and an extra point in the standings. A day after Felix Hernandez pitched a perfect game for the Seattle Mariners, the Lynx were pretty perfect themselves, not allowing a goal and not taking a single penalty. Richards was very active for St. Petersburg, firing 8 shots on net, while Derek Stepan led the Caps in that department with 5. Francois Beauchemin had 3 blocked shots and 3 hits for Edinburgh, which is suddenly involved in a five-car pileup at the bottom of the Northern Conference standings. Each team in 8th through 12th place has 16 points at the moment.
Bratislava 3, Milan 0
Bratislava is desparately trying to keep up with Bern at the top of the Southern Conference standings and they kept pace on Thursday thanks to the shutout goaltending of Craig Anderson and the play of veteran Jason Arnott and his fourth line teammates. Anderson stopped 18 shots to earn his second shutout of the season. He continues to be the league leader in the goalie stats categories. Anderson will get a rest on Friday, when Richard Bachman will tend goal against visiting Stockholm. Arnott was too slow to get off on a change in the second period and he was caught out while linemates Ville Leino and David Moss were starting their rest on the bench. So he parked himself in front of Milan’s Josh Harding to save on energy. Martin Erat dipsy-doodled around the Guerriero zone and fired a wrist shot that Harding got a glove on. But the puck dropped down to Arnott’s stick and he banged it home to open the scoring. Moss and Erat scored goals later in the period for the Eagles, who had 11 powerplay chances that were all thwarted by Harding and Milan.
Bern 3, Moscow 2
Mike Smith stopped 37 Moscow shots and the Bears scored three powerplay goals in the second period to stay ahead of Bratislava in the standings. Henrik Zetterberg assisted on Radim Vrbata goal to open the scoring and then added one himself before Andy McDonald scored the eventual game winner. In the third period, Moscow got on the scoreboard when Marc-Andre Bourdon scored and later, with Jaro Halak pulled in favor of the extra attacker, Alexander Ovechkin scored to make it a one-goal game with 17 seconds remaining. Ovechkin received favorable treatment from the hometown media, as he was named the second star of the game. His stats line didn’t look like star material. In 20 minutes, he took 2 shots and delivered 1 hit, aside from scoring the late goal. Maybe he cheered really well from the bench.
Paris 6, Madrid 5 (overtime)
Les Paris Rouges Eiffels rediscovered their offensive game enough to put 6 on the board and earn a win before 22,500 adoring fans. Drew Miller was the unlikely leader of the charge, scoring his second of the year to put Paris in front for the first time in the game and then scoring a shorthanded goal to get them back in the game when it looked like they were going to let another game slip away. Four Madrid Royals had scored to give them a 4-2 heading into the third period. But Paris outscored Madrid 3-1 in that frame to force overtime. In the extra session, it was Corey Perry who sent the Paris fans into a frenzy with a wrist shot from about 15 feet out in the middle of the slot. His teammates jumped over the boards and mobbed him a little to the side of worn out and dejected Madrid goalie Marty Biron. The win broke a 10-game losing streak for Paris that included two losses to Madrid. The Royals are now 10-8-1 and in 8th place in the Southern Conference.
Copenhagen 5, Minsk 2
Copenhagen’s recipe for success Thursday was more conventional than their last: a powerplay goal, a shorthanded goal, 3 goals from defensemen and a lot fewer penalties. Joni Pitkanen twice gave the Tridents first-period leads and a Brandon Sutter shorty in the final minute of the first wound up being the game-winner. Five players had 2 points for Copenhagen, while Derek Roy (1 powerplay goal) led everyone in shots with 5. For Minsk, young Swede Jacob Josefson scored a goal and had 4 shots in 12 minutes of ice time, and he was the only Hussar center who won the majority of his faceoffs.
Athens 4, Berlin 1
The Greeks were outshot 32-25 but thanks to the outstanding goaltending of Tomas Vokoun, won fairly easily. Kris Versteeg put Berlin in front with a goal int he first period, but the Greeks has the lead going into the first intermission thanks to goals by Scott Hartnell and Todd Bertuzzi. Early in the third period, Athens went up three nothing on a shorthanded goal by defenseman Johnny Boychuk. But with a little less than 4 minutes left and the win pretty much in hand, Boychuk’s goal – and all other goals scored this year by Athens – were upstaged when Tom Kostopoulos went five hole on Mika Kiprusoff to score his first of the season. The fans in Athens, happy to see a Greek boy score, did not stop cheering and chanting his name until the game ended.
