Copenhagen was relentless and St. Petersburg didn’t have it Wednesday and that means the Tridents are a win away from the Northern Conference Finals to play either Helsinki or Moscow. Helsinki won by a goal and now their series is tied. The Red Stars did a lot of clean hitting and Pekka Rinne was good in goal, but Copenhagen was too strong, winning 3-2. The Tridents scored in each period and had double figures in shot every period as well, eventually winning the shot count by a whopping 39-18 margin. All their goals came from the top line of Alexander Ovechkin, Stephen Weiss and Tomas Fleischmann. Ovechkin scored a pair, including the game-winner. He now has 4 goals in his last two games. Just as importantly, the Tridents weren’t called for a single penalty in Game 4.  As we said, there was a lot of clean hitting in the game, St. Petersburg doing the majority of it and eventually leaving with a 37-27 advantage in that category. Most of Copenhagen’s heavy hitting came from two players. Shea Weber had 9 and Niclas Gorssman had 6. Another subtle contribution was the faceoff work done by Weiss who won 24 of 38 draws, most of them against St. Petersburg’s Brad Richards. It looked for a while like St. Petersburg was going to turn the game around in their favor. Late in the second period, two veteran forwards scored goals 2 minutes apart to tie the contest at 2-2. Olli Jokinen and David Legwand’s goals were the first of the playoffs for both men. Roberto Luongo shut out the Red Stars the rest of the way, but his teammates deserve credit for allowing just 6 pucks to get to him in the third period. Game 5:  If ever Pekka Rinne was needed for a miracle game, it’s now. Copenhagen scores goals with regularity and an average performance by the Red Star goalie will mean St. Petersburg’s season is toast. In their 8 previous meetings this year, St. Petersburg has only won 2 and they have only held the Tridents to under 3 goals once in the 8 games.

Nerius Alisauskas and Paul Stastny scored to lead Helsinki to a 2-1 lead at home in a series that is now tied 2-2. Wednesday’s win wasn’t a case in which Helsinki Henrik stole a game. He did well, for sure, stopping 17 of 18 shots, but it was definitely a team win for the Jokerit. After two periods of play, they outshot Moscow 27-11, and although Spartak goalie Jaroslav Halak was keeping his team within a goal of tying it, the home team seemed to be in control.  A notoriously tough team, Helsinki wound up out-hitting Moscow 41-21, with seldom-used veteran Nik Antropov administering 6 hits in just 7 minutes. At 7:19 of the third period the constant pressure finally cracked Halak for a second time, Stastny pushing the puck past the sprawled netminder for his fourth playoff goal. Alisauskas made it interesting by taking a penalty late in the game, and 4 seconds before he was going to leave the box, Dustin Brown of Moscow scored his 5th playoff goal to ruin Lundqvist’s shutout bid and to make it very tense for the final 28 seconds.  Game 5: The series is perfectly balanced now, but by Friday night, one of the teams will feel its back right up against the proverbial wall, a loss away from the golf course. Everyone except for Moscow’s Derek Roy will be healthy and ready to go. Roy seemed to hurt his right forearm or wrist in Wednesday’s clash, but he stayed in the game.  In Game 4, Helsinki coach Barry Trotz went to the rookie well again and pulled up success. After seeing how rookie Jacob Trouba has excelled in the playoffs, Trotz demoted Alexander Burrows and inserted 20-year-old Boone Jenner onto the left side of the fourth line and his nervous excitement and energy translated into an assist in Alisauskas’ goal that made it 1-0.