3 January 2024
We’re back in action after the New Year break with three games on the road at Western Conference rivals. The Dragons are also looking forward to welcoming Thomas Schemitsch to the lair. The 27-year-old defenseman is due to link up with the guys following his time at the Spengler Cup with Team Canada. While he was there, he had a chance to get the lowdown on life with Red Star from our former defenseman Zac Leslie, who also played for the Canadians in Davos. After ending 2023 on a run of losses, let’s hope our holiday wishes come true and we can start 2024 with a winning run!
Torpedo (a), Jan. 4, 1300 Moscow Time
Last time out: Well, the good news is we’ve scored twice in each of our three meetings with Torpedo this season. The bad news is that they’ve scored more. An OT loss on home ice on Nov. 2 is our best result against Igor Larionov’s team so far this term.
Familiar faces: On our side, Brandon McMillan is up against one of his former clubs. For Torpedo, Igor Larionov Jr and Alexei Kruchinin both had short spells with the Dragons during the lockdown-affected 2020/21 campaign.
Background: This season’s Torpedo is something of an enigma. Igor Larionov’s team can blow hot and cold – sometimes in the same game. We saw that in the final action before the new year. At home to Lokomotiv, Torpedo fell 0-5 behind, only to rally from nowhere and make the final score 3-5. Time ran out before the home team could give Igor Nikitin’s men serious cause for concern, but the unpredictability was visible once again.
And unpredictable is the word. This is a team that can beat in-form SKA and league leader Spartak in back-to-back games. But it’s also a team prone to little skids. It’s a free-scoring team that has been blanked five times this season and found itself on the wrong end of four 0-1 scorelines (one of them in OT!).
In team news, Nikolai Kovalenko is on the injured list. And, improbably, 50-year-old goalie Nikolai Khabibulin is registered and available to play after signing a deadline day deal. Should he feature at any point this season, he would become the oldest netminder to play in the KHL.
Dynamo Moscow (a), Jan. 6, 1300 Moscow Time
Last time out: This was a special one. On Nov. 8 we got an OT win in Moscow, finally defeating Dynamo in the KHL for the first time in our history. That win, courtesy of a Brandon McMillan strike, completed the set: the Dragons could claim a…
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