St. St. Petersburg SKA lost to Ekaterinburg Avtomobilist in the first match of the Gagarin Cup quarter-finals.
St. The match held in St. Petersburg ended with the guest team winning 3:2.
Yekaterinburg team’s goals were scored by Semyon Kizimov, Alexey Makeev and Denis Barantsev. Marat Khairullin and Sergei Sapego scored the goals for SKA.
Accordingly, Avtomobilist finished the series ahead 1-0. The second game of the best-of-four match will be played on March 19 at SKA Arena.
In the 2023/24 season, crossover play-offs have been introduced in the second round stage, where teams from different conferences play each other.
For the first time in the history of the Kontinental Hockey League, both of the last Gagarin Cup finalists failed to advance past the first round of the following season. CSKA lost to Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the 1/8 final. The fifth match of the series ended with the score of 6:3 for the Yaroslavl team. CSKA is the current owner of the Gagarin Cup. Lost to Ekaterinburg Avtomobilist in the Ak Bars series. The series ended with a score of 1:4. In the fifth match, the club from the capital of Tatarstan was defeated with a score of 1:2.
Previously Spartak was devastating loss Gagarin Cup quarter finals.