Athens 5, Madrid 4 (OT-SO) – The Gods beat Madrid in the end, but the Royals were somehow able to squeeze a point out of the loss. Logan Couture’s 27th goal of the season put Athens up 4-3 in the third period and he and his teammates were holding on to the lead when Loui Eriksson was called for interference. Patrik Berglund scored on the ensuing powerplay and the teams had to go to overtime and then a shootout. Athens, Madrid and Paris are all battling in the standings for positions 3, 4 and 5 at the moment and every point is big in that very close competition. Couture was the offensive star of the game with 2 goals and one assist. He is sixth in the league in scoring and one of four Gods in the top 20.
Bratislava 5, St. Petersburg 2 – Brent Burns played six season in St. Petersburg but in Tuesday he was wearing something other than a Krasnyye Zvezdy sweater. The Bratislava Eagle defenseman blasted a slapshot in to open the scoring against his old team and the Slovakian team cruised to a win, outshooting the hosts 49-19. Burns, Alexander Ovechkin and Jonathan Toews each ended with a goal and an assist. Surprising Bratislava is in third place overall and in first in the Southern Conference. The Red Stars are really banged up lately. They started the game with Brent Seabrook, Ilya Kovalchuk and Oscar Klefbom all injured, and then Cam Atkinson hurt his wrist in the game and is expected to be out of the lineup for a week or more.
Moscow 4, Zurich 1 – The Lions could only manage an unassisted Tomas Tatar goal when they visited the Moscow Dynamo. Good goaltending by Viktor Fasth and two points each from Patrick Maroon and Nick Leddy spurred Moscow, which is trying to hold off Helsinki for fourth place in the Northern Conference with 15 games to go. Zurich slipped further back in the race for the final playoff berth in the South and they are now 6 points behind 8th-place Munich.
Paris 6, Prague 2 – Corey Perry scored a pair of goals to lead Paris, while teammates Evgeny Malkin (2 assists) and Alexander Semin (4 blocks) helped. Justin Schultz blocked 5 shots and dished out 4 hits for Sparta.
Gothenburg 3, Belfast 1 – Cal Clutterbuck took a first-period penalty but more than made up for it by scoring his 18th and 19th goals of the year for Frolunda. In between his goals, Petr Vrana notched his 27th and all three Gburg goals came after Claude Giroux gave the Giants a 1-0 lead about halfway into the first period. Todd Graham was called up by Belfast for the game and the 6-5, 230-pound defenseman took on Mark Fraser in a fight in the first period. Micki Dupont and P.K. Subban have been handling most of the fighting this year for Belfast and they were probably happy to have been given the day off against heavyweight Fraser.
Copenhagen 7, Dublin 4 – Mathieu Perreault and defensemen Kevin Bieksa and Dougie Hamilton scored goals in a four-minute span of the second period to help Copenhagen pull away from the Fighting Irish. Hamilton added a goal late in the game and the Trident powerplay clicked for goals twice in two tries. Johnny Gaudreau had 4 points for Copenhagen. Ten different Dublin players contributed with one point each. Copenhagen is now 2 points behind fourth-place Moscow in the North, while Dublin is holding on to the final playoff spot, 3 points in front of Edinburgh. A win on the road has been a rare thing for Copenhagen this year. The Tridents’ home and away records are reverse images of each other (25-6-4 at home; 6-20-5 away).
Trivia Answer:
Semyon Varlamov of Oslo has made the most saves so far this season (1,766). Next in line are Braden Holtby, Stockholm (1,620); Jakub Kovar, Edinburgh (1,460); Jaroslav Halak, Athens (1,446) and Alexander Salak, Moscow (1,402).
