Yashkin and Denisenko are out of favor with Gatiaytulin, Bilyalov is on fire: Ak Bars defeats Salavat Yulaev again

Yashkin and Denisenko remained on the bench

By the end of the year, the Ak Bars roster began to change rapidly. The defeat to SKA forced Anvar Gatiaytulin to take drastic measures. After a series of matches without goals, Grigory Denisenko lost his place on the roster. The autumn newcomer stopped scoring and gaining points, although he looked quite fresh at the beginning of the championship. If at first this transition could be assessed positively for Ak Bars, by the end of the year the attitude towards him had changed.

Dmitry Yashkin, on the other hand, was left off the roster, apparently for his unjustified penalty in the match against SKA. In St. Petersburg, the forward received a double minor penalty for attempting a колющий strike at a time when the Kazan team was playing with a man advantage in a 5-on-3 format. After the game, Gatiaytulin publicly criticized the former captain of the «Bars» and sent him to watch the game from the stands in Ufa. Yashkin was replaced in the first link by Artem Galimov, who had not played since December 3 due to poor form and a cold.

The return of Timur Bilyalov to the roster was important. Due to illness, the main goalkeeper missed several matches. His backup was Maxim Arefyev, who got tired after a series of games in the starting lineup.

Salavat Yulaev was without two leaders. Forward Sheldon Rempal literally destroyed the Kazan team in the last game between the teams in Ufa, scoring four points. However, the hockey player is going through a difficult period in his life now. Rempal went to his homeland at the beginning of the week, where his brother tragically died, and it is not yet known when he will return to Russia. Experienced forward Alexander Khokhlachev was also not on the roster.

Bilyalov lost his shutout 15 seconds before the siren

The match started quite actively. The teams created good opportunities in front of the goal, but only a few of them were dangerous. Towards the middle of the period, Ak Bars took the initiative and overwhelmed the opponent. After another flurry in front of Semyon Vyazovoy's goal, Mikhail Fisenko passed the puck to the blue line, from where Stepan Falkovsky put the puck precisely into the Salavat net — 1:0 in favor of the guests. At the end of the period, the Kazan team could have converted the power play, but the Salavat goalkeeper made a great save, jumping to catch Galimov's shot with his glove.

The second period started with penalties, first mutual, and then a single one for Ak Bars. The hosts failed to convert their power play opportunity, but tensions on the ice escalated. A little later, Fisenko and Jack Rodewald clashed in a fight: the Kazan «tough guy» knocked the Ufa player to the ground. This activity from both teams ended with a goal by Ilya Karpukhin. However, the Salavat coaches challenged the play, and the referees canceled the goal, finding an offside by the defender at the moment the puck was scored.

Ilya Safonov could have scored right after that, but he failed to beat Vyazovoy in close combat. The home team's goalkeeper also saved his team during Ak Bars' power play. After the canceled goal, the Kazan team practically locked Salavat Yulaev in their own zone, depriving the opponent of any chances to get to Bilyalov's goal. The home team players were helped to recover by two consecutive penalties in the Bars roster. First, Aleksey Pustozerov got a penalty out of nowhere, and then Ilya Karpukhin left his teammates shorthanded.

Part of the penalty carried over to the third period, which also started with a series of penalties for both teams. Neither team managed to gain any advantage on the power play that evening. Although, it would seem, in the absence of Rempal and Yashkin, the players replacing them should have fought tooth and nail for a place in the power play units.

The audience saw more or less interesting hockey only at the end of the match. The Ufa team pressed on the Ak Bars goal, trying to equalize the score. However, the guests caught them on the counterattack. Semenov shot from the blue line, and Alexander Barabanov finished off the puck into the net — 2:0. The current Salavat Yulaev is not a team that gives up without a fight. Even with this score, the home team replaced the goalkeeper with a sixth skater and scored one goal back. And Bilyalov lost his shutout, with 15 seconds left before the final siren.

«Two similar matches»

Ak Bars had another boring match. After the victory in Ufa, Gatiaytulin admitted that when setting up the game, he is guided by the current state of the team. It turns out that for now, the «Bars» are only ready for this kind of hockey — sticky, with no chances and no special opportunities for the opponent. In St. Petersburg, the home team managed to catch Ak Bars off guard for a minute, but in Ufa, the Yulaev team was powerless.

«We had two matches on the road with similar plots: we scored first, missed many opportunities to increase the lead, made mistakes and took penalties that gave the opponent chances. Today the guys responded correctly to the previous match, had a good game and won. We always tell the guys that it's important to start from their current state. We have a third match in a day, and another road trip. We need to clearly understand what we can do today and avoid неоправданный risk. Today we managed to do that, so we achieved victory,» Gatiaytulin said.

The coach mentioned penalties for a reason. After a week-long mini-break for the First Channel Cup, Ak Bars accumulated 46 minutes of penalties in three matches. In two matches against Salavat, the Kazan team was penalized eight times, and against SKA they received seven two-minute penalties. Such penalties won't be forgiven in the playoffs. Moreover, the «Bars» themselves have practically stopped converting their power plays.

Salavat Yulaev — Ak Bars — 1:2 (0:1, 0:0, 1:1)
Goals:
0:1 — Falkovsky (Fisenko, 10:23);
0:2 — Barabanov (Brovkin, Semenov, 55:00);
1:2 — Efremov (Kuznetsov, Pimenov, 59:45, 6x5).

Gatiaytulin's team has another week-long break ahead, but then a six-match home series will begin. Ak Bars will play its next match on December 27 in Kazan against Chelyabinsk Traktor at 17:00 Moscow time. For now, the «Bars» are second in the Eastern Conference, five points ahead of Avangard. However, the Kazan team has played five more matches than Omsk and is in third place in terms of lost points.