ST. PETERSBURG — Dinamo Riga have claimed a point in St. Petersburg, pushing KHL leaders SKA to overtime before going down 3-2.

Starting arguably their most difficult and important part of their road last night, they would have been reasonably happy to secure a point with some key personnel away. Lively Robert Petrovicky is another week of returning whilst inspirational captain Sandis Ozoliņš will be watching from the stands for at least a month.

With these key players away, others simply recognized the need to step up. Thankfully their early game jitters that had riddled their early season remained illusive with Marcel Hossa giving the visitors an early lead in the 5th minute. Jānis Sprukts used his size to his advantage in front of the goal pulling in the SKA defenders to leave Hossa with the open shot.

SKA did not take long to reply as they moved back onto equal footing less than two minutes later through Peter Chayanek. In the 16th minute the deadly combination of Sprukts and Hossa combined again with Hossa forcing the puck under the goalies pads, leaving the ever-present Hossa with the simplest of tap ins.

Just over two minutes into the second period and SKA brought it back to a tied game once again with Maxim Sushinski contributing for the home side. Dinamo Riga were unable to create more opportunities as power-plays came and went. At the same time, Dinamo Riga’s defense was looking more solid than it had a game previous.

With time winding down neither team could break the stalemate, meaning the game would  go into over-time. Dinamo Riga started the added time a man up but could not make anything of the advantage, failing to get a solid shot of before the power-play ran out.

Back to their full artillery SKA went straight onto the attack making Dinamo Riga pay. After their initial wave of attack was defended, Alexei Yashin let rip from deep with his shot finding its way into the top right of the net.

With one point secured from the game Dinamo Riga have at least taken something from their visit to St. Petersburg but somewhere along this road trip they are going to have get the straight out win if they are to remain in touch with the leading teams.