CSKA faced Torpedo for the third time this season. With the previous two wins counting toward the Firsts Cup, the teams were simply battling for two points in the Western Conference standings. Nazar Privalov is back in the CSKA lineup following a stint with the Russian national junior team. There was also room in the lineup for Derek Barach, who returned after sitting out last game to skate on the top line alongside Maxim Mamin and Pavel Karnaukhov. Dmitry Gamzin got the start in net as part of the team's usual goalie rotation.
The Army Men came out like a whirlwind in the first few minutes. Four minutes into the game, Nikolai Kovalenko – playing in his 100th game for CSKA – skated in untouched and opened the scoring. Then Klim Kostin then scored off a great feed from Nikita Nesterov, before Kovalenko tallied his second, burying a pass from Denis Gurianov. Trailing 3-0, the road team took a timeout to settle down, but it didn’t help. Torpedo still left too much space in front of the net, and we capitalized again. Maxim Sorkin tips Dmitri Samorukov's shot right back onto his own stick and buries it into a wide-open net. After that, Torpedo goaltender Denis Kostin was pulled in favor of Dmitry Shugayev. The second period was tighter, but CSKA still took it. Prokhor Poltapov scored on the power play. The outcome was decided, but the battle raged on. The third period had it all – penalties, heated scrums, and unfortunately, they scored on us. But we still came away with the two points.
