UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 24, 2016. Sputnik Hockey Club (sponsored by Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) made it to the Supreme Hockey League’s playoff, which was this season’s primary goal, the corporation’s press service reports.

The team beat Saratov’s Kristall 3:2 and secured the 14th position out of sixteen playoff slots.

Two more Ural teams (Chelyabinsk’s Chelmet and Orsk’s Yuzhniy Ural) competed for the playoff as well and won their decisive games earlier, so the only way for the Nizhniy Tagil team to make it to the playoff was to beat their rivals with the three-goal score.

Kristall is now one of the championship’s outsiders. Still, quite a few supporters came to see the game, and it was unclear till the very last seconds of the match who is going to win. Sputnik’s center-forward Evgeniy Gasnikov scored the first goal at the twenty-fifth minute of the game and scored again during the next twenty-five minutes. Fullback Konstantin Fomichev’s goal in the third part of the game secured Sputnik’s victory.

All in all, Nizhniy Tagil’s ‘beavers’ won eleven games out of fifteen this year so far.