AK Bars won’t be able to defend their KHL crown this season as they were eliminated by Salavat Yualev in the second round of the Gagarin Cup playoffs.
A lone goal, scored by Aleksandr Radulov in the second half, saw Salavat grabbing a 1-0 away win in Kazan.
The result was enough for the Ufa men to win their best-of-seven series 4-1 and progress to the semifinals.
Avagard Omsk 4-3 Metallurg Magnitogorsk
Avangard Omsk are just one step away from the Gagarin Cup semis finals, following a 4-3 overtime win against Metallurg Magnitogorsk, which made the score 3-2 in the best-of-seven series.
Czech veteran Jaromir Jagr opened the scoring for Avangard after two minutes, but the regular season champions were unable to preserve the advantage in the first period, which ended 2-2.
Igor Volkov restored the home team’s lead with a powerplay effort in the middle of the second 20 minutes, 3-2.
Metallurg had a great chance to equalize at the end of the period. Andrey Pervyshin was penalized for cross-checking, but the guests failed to beat Omsk keeper, Karri Ramo, despite having an extra man for four minutes.
They made it 3-3 in the middle of the third period as Evgeny Varlamov finally converted the powerplay.
The teams set a KHL record needing three overtimes to find the winner, which came from Andrey Pervyshin, in their previous meeting and could not avoid playing an extra period in this one too.
It was Omsk hero Prevyshin who scored again six minutes into the second overtime, to assure Avangard would become the first team to win at home in the series.
Magnitogorsk will become the venue for Game six, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday, March 19.