How SKA overcomes the Olympic hangover

Sensation did not happen - two games of the first round of the Gagarin Cup playoffs against Severstal were completed for SKA with two victories. "Fontanka" tells how the intrigue barely arisen.

SKA fans are the happiest in the KHL. They have no problems. For each game they go, as a guaranteed holiday. They know that even if something doesnt work out for the team today, in the end, in a couple of months they will still run after the SKA bus across Nevsky and shout "We are the champions!". There are not that many things in this world that can be talked about with such certainty.

SKA has no competitors. In the composition of Petersburgers play 15 Olympic champions. The well-wishers joke that this is the first time in history when the Olympic Games won a professional club. But this, sorry, still little things. Olympic Zampions Znarka in SKA did not qualify for the first playoff game against Severstal. Outside the application remained Nikolai Prokhorkin and Andrei Zubarev. Well, another bonus - albeit not an Olympic champion, but the SKA leader in terms of utility among defense players David Rundblad also watched this game from the rostrum. At the SKA is simply a monstrous reserve of forces. Take the Gagarin Cup to St. Petersburg.

The sensation, which Severstal did not create in Saturday's first game, only proves all this. Olympic champions from SKA started too relaxed. Analogies with the Olympic finals against Germany.

"Severstal", literally teeth gnawing a place in the playoffs, just as the Germans - the place in the finals, was charged to the limit. This was enough to equalize and even come forward in the second period, when SKA again led in the account, to score more and transfer the game into overtime. But when the smell of fried, the army team from the Neva joined and brought the match to victory: a throw of Pavel Datsyuk, who, as he himself admits after winning the Olympics, no longer dreams, did not give the dream to cherepovchans.