MOSCOW, December 5 (R-Sport) - Alex Ovechkin scored an assist as his lockout team Dynamo Moscow secured the lead in the KHL's Western Conference with a 3-1 win over second-placed Lokomotiv Yaroslavl on Wednesday.
Washington Capitals forward Ovechkin set up Leonid Komarov's first-period opening goal before two Dynamo goals in the second period from Denis Mosalyov and Ilya Gorokhov put the game out of Lokomotiv's reach.
Ovechkin is now on 28 points from 23 KHL games since returning to his former team Dynamo for the NHL lockout.
It was Dynamo's second win in two meeting this season with the Yaroslavl team that was rebuilt after an air crash last year killed the entire roster.
Elsewhere, New Jersey Devils alternate captain Ilya Kovalchuk struck the winning goal on an opposition power-play Wednesday as his lockout team SKA St. Petersburg beat Atlant Moscow Region 5-4 in the KHL.
SKA stays third in the Western Conference behind Dynamo and Lokomotiv, while Atlant is 12th and trying to rebuild a season that was derailed by an 11-game losing streak.
SKA captain Kovalchuk's 55th minute goal was his second of a match in which Atlant had twice taken the lead only to be pegged back by SKA.
For Atlant, former Montreal Canadiens center Andreas Engqvist scored two goals in a standout performance.
Ak Bars Kazan took the top spot in the Eastern Conference with a 5-4 penalty shots win over Sibir Novosibirsk, now sixth, as former leader Traktor Chelyabinsk struggled.
Jarkko Immonen scored the winning penalty shot for Ak Bars, which has declined to sign any NHLers.
Traktor slipped to third from first in the East after a surprise 2-1 defeat at home to expansion team Donbass Donetsk from Ukraine, ninth in the Western Conference. Jani Tuppurainen scored the winning goal for Donbass with a 45th-minute penalty shot.
The other team to pass Traktor was last-year's Gagarin Cup final runner-up Avangard Omsk, now second in the East.
Avangard won the day's first game 5-3 at home to Dynamo Minsk from Belarus to take revenge for a 3-2 overtime defeat earlier in the season. Dynamo Minsk is 10th in the West.
Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin put in a commanding performance for Metallurg Magnitogorsk with a goal and four assists as the Siberian team swept aside Latvia's lowly Dinamo Riga 7-2.
Metallurg is fourth in the East and regained some stability with a second straight win after three defeats, while Dinamo remains 14th and last in the West and with the unwanted record of being the KHL's lowest-scoring team.
Another high-scoring game saw Salavat Yulaev Ufa, fifth in the East, record a 6-4 win over Amur Khabarovsk, ranked six places lower.
In other games, Kazakhstan's Barys Astana, eighth in the Eastern Conference, managed a 3-0 win over Severstal Cherepovets, the Western Conference's fifth-placed team, which saw a four-game winning streak snapped.
Barys goaltender Vitaly Mikhailov achieved his first shutout in 10 games this season.
NHL No. 1 draft pick Nail Yakupov's Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk held onto seventh place in the Eastern Conference with a 4-3 win over Metallurg Novokuznetsk, two places lower.
Yakupov himself played little part after getting a game penalty on 5:21 for an elbow strike.
Western Conference outsiders Vityaz Chekhov, placed 11th, managed to beat 10th-placed Eastern team Yugra Khanty-Mansiisk 5-4, while the team at the foot of the Eastern table, Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, recorded a rare win over the West's 13th-placed Spartak Moscow, beating the team from the capital 1-0.
