KHL regular season champion Traktor Chelyabinsk defeated Ak Bars Kazan 3-1 with two late goals on home ice in their Eastern Conference semifinal series opener Wednesday.
In the day’s other game, Avangard Omsk lost their first game of the playoffs with a 1-0 overtime defeat at home to Metallurg Magnitogorsk.
Traktor registered 29 shots on goal, only one more than Ak Bars, and fell behind three minutes into the second period when Evgeny Skachkov put the Kazan team in front.
Andrei Popov leveled the scores for Traktor eight minutes later, before Stanislav Chistov put the home team into the lead on a power play four minutes into the third period.
Ak Bars withdrew goaltender Petri Vahanen as it pressed for an equalizer, and Traktor took full advantage with Konstantin Panov scoring an empty-net goal to decide the match.
In Omsk, Avangard were unable to score from 34 shots on the Metallurg goal, and lost when Sergey Mozyakin scored seven minutes into overtime for the Magnitogorsk team, which came off a seven-game series against Barys Astana.
Thursday’s games see SKA St. Petersburg hoping to extend its 1-0 series lead over Atlant Moscow Region, while Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod are 1-0 down to visiting Dynamo Minsk.
