MOSCOW — Dinamo Riga have suffered another defeat, this time at the hands of CSKA Moscow, going down 5-3 on Wednesday evening.
Dinamo Riga’s three goals meant little with the result all but decided halfway through the second period when the home-side put its fifth unanswered goal into the back of the net.
Dinamo Riga decided to stick with Edgars Masaļskis in goal, after he had been brought on midway through Dinamo Riga’s previous game. However the plan seemed to backfire when they found themselves 3-0 down after 17 minutes, with Dennis Parshin (4th minute), Dennis Kulyarsh (10th minute) and Nicholas Dmitrikos (17th minute) all scoring first period goals for the hosts.
CSKA started the second period, like they had finished the first, on an all-out goal scoring rampage with a further two added within 12 minutes courtesy of Vacheslav Kulemin (4th minute) and Peter Shaslivy (12th minute) extending the lead to five.
With nothing left to lose, Dinamo Riga lifted the aggression with Lauris Darzins receiving two minutes in the box. Soon after things got completely out of hand as a fight ensued seeing Mike Iggulden and Evegeny Korotkov both given fourteen minutes in the penalty box for fighting.
Although not to be condoned, the fight seemed to be the perfect recipe to fire the Latvian’s up as the momentum of the game quickly changed to Dinamo Riga’s favor, with Mārtiņš Cipulis scoring the visitors first less than a minute after the fight.
Dinamo Riga took complete control of the final period adding a second in the seventh minute through Marcel Hossa, who was then on hand to score Dinamo Riga’s third and final goal 13 minutes later.
Some serious soul-searching will be going on in the Dinamo Riga camp over the next few days as they try to get to the bottom of what is going so seriously wrong with their team this season. After such a promising debut season last year and a strong preseason showing big things were expected of a Dinamo Riga side that has yet to fire on one cylinder, let alone all six.
They will return home on Friday to face SKA St. Petersburg whom they have already lost to once this season.
