MOSCOW, December 9 (R-Sport) – Hockey team Dinamo Riga delivered league leader SKA St. Petersburg its second straight defeat, storming to a 6-4 victory at their packed home arena.
The Latvian team earned a comfortable 4-0 lead by the middle of the second period, before SKA surged back to make it a one-goal game again, scoring three times in the next 20 minutes.
In a thrilling ending, Canadian wing Matt Robinson first made the score 5-3 to Riga on a power-play, then former New Jersey Devils star Ilya Kovalchuk brought back hope to SKA with five minutes to go, but Miks Indrasis secured the win for hosts with an empty-net goal, his second of the game.
SKA is just two points ahead of reigning champion Dynamo Moscow in the Western standings.
Riga remains fourth level on points with third-placed CSKA Moscow, who edged out Severstal Cherepovets 3-2.
Severstal forward Nikolai Zherdev scored twice to put the visitors in the lead, but goals from Oleg Saprykin, Igor Grigorenko and Nikita Zaitsev earned CSKA a comeback victory.
Severstal keeps 12th place, 11 points outside the playoffs zone.
Meanwhile, fifth-placed Donbass Donetsk grabbed its seventh win in eight games, beating Sibir Novosibirsk 3-2.
The Ukrainian team netted all three goals in the first 12 minutes of play, Sibir answering with a double by Swedish forward Jonas Enlund.
Despite three defeats in a row, out-of-form Sibir is still sixth in the East.
In the other games on Sunday, Atlant Moscow Region won 3-1 at Lev Prague, Eastern outsider Metallurg Novokuznetsk delivered a 2-1 overtime defeat to Spartak Moscow, while two goals by Miroslav Satan brought Slovan Bratislava a 5-3 victory of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.
