“Vitinam” gave way to “Dinamo” guests with 1: 6 (1: 1, 0: 2, 0: 3).
Captain Lauris Dārziņš stood out in the Riga team, but Daugaviņš finished the second game in the ranks of “Vitjaz” this season with four performance points (2 + 2). On September 26, against Ufa “Salavat Julayev” Daugavins earned 1 + 3.
The guests lost the first goal in the seventh minute, as Justin Denforts broke away from the opponent behind the goal and hit Daugaviņš on the “mustache”, who made a strong throw without stopping the puck and achieved 1: 0. The people of Riga didn’t hesitate for a long time, and a minute later Dārziņš flew the blue line of “Vitjaz”, left the puck to Miks Indrašis, but after his throw the captain was first at the puck – 1: 1.
In the middle of the first period, the people of Riga got a chance to play in the numerical majority, where Dārziņš played a puck in front of the goal, but none of the “dynamics” came to it. The first period ended in a draw – 1: 1.
In the introduction of the second third, “Dinamo” was led by Jānis Jaks, who tried to aggravate the situation at the opponents’ goal. In the 7th minute, Zeks Michels went to the rejected bench, but the home team did not use this opportunity. After Daugaviņš “called” the goal post in the tenth minute, 2: 1 was reached in the 11th minute, when Daugaviņš helped Denfort to score.
“Vitjaz” reached 3: 1 in the 17th minute of the second period, when Linus Hulström broke out, but the final 20 minutes were a “real nightmare” for the “Rigans”. At the beginning of the third period, Stanislav Galimov entered the goal of “Dinamo”, but he was beaten three times until the final whistle. Four minutes before the end of the duel, Pāvels Varfomolojevs reached 4: 1 in the majority after the pass of Daugaviņš, a minute later the captain of the Latvian national team called himself 2 + 2, but Artjoms Ivanjuženkovs said the final word at the last minute.
The Rigans beat Minsk’s “Dinamo” in the previous fight with a 4: 3 post-throw series, interrupting a series of four failures in which technical losses were awarded in the last two matches. The Latvian club was quarantined for almost two weeks, returning to the field on Thursday with many newcomers and young hockey players.
Meanwhile, Vitjaz has won the last three of four games. In the previous match, the Podolsk team beat the Omsk “Avangard” in the away team with a 2: 1 post-throw.
Daugaviņš has scored six goals and nine assists in 11 matches this season, which makes him the most productive player in KHL so far.
The two teams met each other a month ago, winning the home team 4: 3 in Riga. Lauris Dārziņš closed the duel with four points, scoring two goals and assisting with two more accurate shots.
In this series of trips, Riga hockey players will also visit Sochi, Helsinki and Minsk. It is expected that the guest performances of “Dinamo” will start with an unusual line-up, as the list of injured players includes the same five defenders and six attackers as before the match on Thursday.
Both teams KHL have been strong against each other 28 times, of which 15 have been won by Rigans. Last season, the victories in four games were divided in half.
With five points in nine games, Dynamo ranks last among 11 Western Conference teams, ahead of only Beijing’s Red Star in the league. Vitjaz is 12th in the West with 12 points in 11 battles.
The people of Riga spent their last away game on September 16, when Khabarovsk’s “Amur” gave up 1: 2 to the guests. Six days later a game was planned for his field, but in the ranks of Riga “Dinamo” and opponents Nizhny Novgorod “Torpedo” was found infection with Covid-19, so this match was postponed, but in the next two duels – against Moscow teams “Dinamo” and CSKA – Latvian the unit suffered technical losses.
Initially, the Riga team was quarantined until October 5, but the government on Tuesday decided to reduce the duration of home quarantine for Covid-19 patients from 14 to ten days, if not earlier than the tenth day after contact with the source of infection is negative, thus giving “Dinamo” healthy players a chance to return to the field faster.
Nine hockey players and two staff members were previously reported to be infected with Covid-19 Dinamo. Currently, the list of injured players includes five defenders and six attackers, most of whom are replaced by players of the Russian Youth Hockey League (MHL) team “Riga”.
Last season, “Dinamo” took the penultimate place in the Western Conference and in the entire league, not qualifying for the Gagarin Cup for the sixth year in a row.
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