Well, that didn’t take long.
While he didn’t score in their season-opening 2-1 overtime loss against Traktor Chelyabinsk Tuesday night, 33 seconds is all that was needed for Pavel Datsyuk to break open the scoring in Thursday’s game against Salavat Yulaev Ufa. Datsyuk made the jump to the top European league this summer with one year left on his contract with Detroit. The Red Wings were fortunate and traded the contract to Phoenix earlier in the summer. This is his first full season in the KHL since the 2004-05 lockout season when he played for Dynamo Moscow.
Datsyuk is playing for SKA St. Petersburg on the same line as Ilya Kovachuk (How is that fair?) and they didn’t need long to connect to light the lamp.
Kovalchuk got the scoring rush going when he skated the puck through the neutral zone before giving backhand pass down the right wing to a streaking Datsyuk. Datsyuk had a ton of open space as the Salavat defense played like a beer league defense against the one good skater on the other team.
By watching it the fist time, you don’t know if it was a good shot by Datsyuk or poor goaltending from Viktor Svedberg as he couldn’t make up his mind on whether to play the pass or the shot. By the time the puck was close to the slot, Svedberg was out of position leading to the tally from Datsyuk.
