St. Petersburg 4, Dublin 2 – The Dublin Fighting Irish wish the end of the regular season would get here before the St. Petersburg Krasnyye Zvezdy are able to pass them. Thursday’s game in Ireland between the two teams was huge for both as they battle for the 8th and final playoff spot in the Northern Conference. Jan Kovar, 25, the Season 5 Rookie of the Year, scored twice to lead St. Petersburg to a road win in what amounted to a 4-point game. Dublin is now two points ahead of Petrograd and both teams have four games remaining. Left on Dublin’s schedule are home games against Belfast and Stockholm and away games in Prague and St. Petersburg for another four-point game. The Irish have one of the worst road records in the league at 8-26-5. St. Petersburg’s remaining schedule includes that game with Dublin, as well as away games in Stockholm and Moscow, and a finale at home against Geneva. Oslo will be eliminated if Dublin gets one more point.

Edinburgh 1, Athens 0 – Luka Gracnar and the Capitals are out of the playoffs and are playing these last few games for pride and to be a pain in the neck to teams that need points. Athens needed points to stay ahead of Lisbon and maybe catch one of the teams ahead of them in the Southern Conference. But Gracnar stuffed them, making 27 saves for his first shutout of the season through 26 games. The 23-year-old Slovenian is turning out to be a steal for the Caps. He was the fifth-last player selected in the Season 5 draft and in two seasons and 52 games, he has a 90.1 save percentage and 3.15 goals against average. On Thursday, he earned the win thanks to Sidney Crosby’s 33rd goal of the season. It was the only goal in the game. Athens is in fifth place in the conference, 4 points ahead of Lisbon and 4 points behind Madrid. If the Gods stay where they are they will have to travel to either Paris, Madrid or Bratislava for their first playoff game.

Helsinki 5, Oslo 4 (OT) – Oslo’s powerplay was good (3 for 6) but a Jack Johnson goal in the third period got the Jokerit to overtime where Alexander Radulov scored to win it for Helsinki and vault them into third place in the Northern Conference. Johnson scored twice, as did teammate Brad Marchand.

Minsk 4, Copenhagen 3 – Minsk got on the board early in the game with a shorthanded tally by Olivier Roland and they led 3-0 before the second period was two minutes old. Copenhagen climbed back to within a goal thanks to good goaltending by Andres De La Garma and goals by Dougie Hamilton and Brandon Dubinsky, but Roland set up Colin Wilson for a third period goal to put the Hussars back up by 2 goals. Milan Lucic was shut out and is now three points behind Steven Stamkos for the league scoring lead. Both have three games left to play.

Milan 5, Madrid 1 – For Madrid fans, this was one of the most disappointing games of the season. Locked in a fierce race for the top spot in the Southern Conference, Dan Bylsma’s Royals didn’t seem ready for the fast-improving Milan Guerriero and their two Andrews. Andrew Hammond was stellar in goal for Milan, stopping 29 of 30 Madrid shots. Meanwhile the Guerriero powerplay was … well, powerful, scoring 4 times in 6 opportunites, including two by veteran defenseman Andrew MacDonald.

Berlin 3, Geneva 0 – The Smurfs shut out Geneva and although Calvin Pickard gets to put the whitewash on his stats sheet, it was really a team effort. The Generals were held to 2 shots in the third period and 18 in the game. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was in on all three goals and Roman Polak scored for the first time this season. The game was marred by a fight at the very end when Nick Foligno of Geneva and Staffan Kronwall fought in front of the Smurf bench. Players from both teams scquared off with each other and wrestled for several minutes. The hard feelings and angry language continued as the referees tried to line the teams up for a faceoff with just one second left, but in the end they dropped the puck with no one ready and the horn blew to end it. Berlin is employing an interesting strategy this season. Veterans Nikolai Kulemin, Nick Bonino, Nathan Horton and more recently Mike Green have been part of the traveling squad all season, but they have mainly watched as young Smurfs have been given ice time to gain experience.  Still, the Smurfs have spent most of the season atop the Schloder Division, giving them the second seed in the South. But Lisbon could leapfrog the Smurfs and send Berlin from second to sixth in the conference. Lisbon trails Berlin by two points with both teams looking at 3 games remaining on their schedules.

Suspension

The season is over for Prague’s Torey Krug. A match penalty he earned Wednesday against Lisbon also earned him a suspension that will cause him to miss the final two games of his team’s schedule. Jared Spurgeon will miss two to three weeks, making him questionable for the start of the playoffs, thanks to Krug. With a little more than 3 minutes to play in their game, the two small defensemen battled for a puck along the boards and Krug elbowed Spurgeon, somehow resulting in a foot injury. Krug and Prague GM Peter Ott argued the suspension, saying Krug was just trying to defend himself. They alleged that Spurgeon was attempting a roundhouse kick and Krug blocked it with his arm. “How else to you explain me injuring his foot with my elbow?” Krug said. Sepp Blatter, the league’s director of player safety and discipline, said “I can’t hear you, Torey.”