Toros Neftekamsk have recorded their first win of the VHL season, beating SKA-VMF St Petersburg 5:3 in Neftekamsk on Monday evening. The match, played on 7 September 2026, ended the visitors' recent two-game winning run and left the hosts still searching for consistency after a difficult start to the campaign.
Before kick-off the hosts sat 18th in the table with one defeat and zero points from their opening game. A loss to Perm on 3 September had left them with work to do. Tonight's result changes that picture, though the margin of victory does not erase the fact that they remain near the bottom of the standings.
SKA-VMF had arrived in good spirits. They had beaten Izhevsk 3:2 on Friday and Olympia 3:2 on Wednesday, showing a level of composure that few expected at this stage of the season. To be fair, they had also lost to SKA St Petersburg and Vladivostok in slightly wider margins, but the momentum was with them.
By then the visitors had accumulated two points from three games, while Toros sat on zero. The gap between the sides was not vast, but the confidence factor mattered. What happened on the ice suggested that the visitors' rhythm had been disrupted, even if the scoreboard told only part of the story.
The result leaves Toros Neftekamsk with a result to build on, however small. SKA-VMF will look to regroup and prove that this was an outlier rather than a pattern. The table will not shift dramatically, but momentum in hockey, as in any sport, is built one game at a time.