CSKA Moscow and Vladivostok met in the KHL on Thursday evening, and the visitors came away with a 4:2 win in Moscow. The result shifts the balance in a league where every game feels heavier than the last. By then, the home side had already built something of a rhythm from their opening fixtures, while Vladivostok were still searching for a foothold.
The match itself is hard to pin down without minute-by-minute detail, but the scoreboard tells a simple story: Vladivostok outscored their hosts despite CSKA's momentum from earlier in the season. And here's the thing — the visitors had already shown vulnerability in their previous outings, losing 1:2 to Dynamo Moscow and 0:2 to Barys Kazan. They came to Moscow with nothing to lose and played like it.
CSKA sit seventh with two games, one win and one loss. They had won 3:0 against Nizhny Novgorod on Tuesday and suffered a 2:3 defeat to Spartak Moscow three days before that. To be fair, they also bounced back with a 5:3 win over Yekaterinburg, so the form was erratic rather than flat. This result means they remain level on points with their opponents, but the away end never stopped talking about the performance.
Vladivostok sit tenth after two defeats and zero points — which tells you nothing about the season, really, since the table has barely started. They lost 0:3 to SKA St Petersburg and 5:6 to Barys in their opening matches, then squeezed a 2:1 win against SKA-VVF. By then, the expectation was modest, but the victory over CSKA changes the tone. They ended a barren spell, even if the league has barely begun.
The gap in the standings remains theoretical at this stage, but the psychology of the game matters. CSKA had been second to everything in their first two matches, and this time they were second to Vladivostok. The table goes out of the window in these early games, yet the result is still a statement — one side held their nerve, the other did not.