Despite the emerging stagnation in the performance of the army team in the current segment of the regular season, the team is still firmly in the first place in the west. But the negative streak of the leader clearly extended. Last Wednesday, after another, third loss in a row, SKA missed the opportunity to take revenge in the confrontation with Lokomotiv. And the 1-2 score at the end of this match again fits into the overall picture of minimal losses from the ground up in the last three matches. This indicator allows you to recognize the bad luck factor and partially reset such disappointing results to chance, because, for example, in the match against Torpedo SKA had so many chances to score that instead of 1:1 the score after the final whistle could have been devastating for the army. So it’s too early to talk about a deterioration in the playing conditions of the red-blues – thanks to the acceleration of the execution, the Rotenberg team may well give away a new impressive series of victories.

Ak Bars have safely forgotten their crisis over a month ago and are now leading the Eastern Conference. However, the concentration of the strongest teams in the East does not yet allow Bilyaletdinov’s charges to relax: after each match, the tournament’s set-up can change significantly. With a puck record of 150-132, Kazan demonstrates superb stability, not scoring in 8 games only in the derby against Salawat Yulayev. In addition, during these eight matches the team defended perfectly, not allowing the opponents to hit their own goal more than 2 times per match. But in the upcoming battle, there is a big risk of messing up these stats.