KHL club Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg claims that biased officiating in Game 7 resulted in their elimination from the Gagarin Cup Playoffs.
The club dropped the deciding game of their opening round playoff series to Ak Bars Kazan in double-overtime by a score of 2-1. All three goals in the game came on the power play, including the overtime winner which happened with Yekaterinburg’s Stepan Khripunov in the penalty box for high sticking.
Referees for the game were Viktor Birin and Ivan Fateyev.
The team has released a statement charging the stripes with favoring their opponent in calls made – and especially in calls not made.
From Avtomobilist, via translation:
“The Avtomobilist hockey club has prepared highlights with examples of biased refereeing in the overtime of the Game 7 of the playoff series against Ak Bars Kazan’s Ak Bars for submission to the KHL Sports Disciplinary Committee.”
“We also suggest that fans familiarize themselves with these video materials. There is an incident of a high stick to the head of Alexei Byvaltsev, as well as situations where Maxim Denezhkin and Kirill Vorobyov were tripped, which went unnoticed by the officials.”
“We will add that the Game 7 referees of the series were Viktor Birin and Ivan Fateyev. Referee Fateyev also officiated the Game 3 of our team’s series against Ak Bars, in which the Kazan club set a unique achievement – going without a penalty for almost 93 minutes of game time.”.
