Several MHL teams have a short pause this week from the busy regular season. To give the players something fun to do in-between practices, MHL team along with Klaustrofobia Amusement Park organized a true hockey quest rivalry for two Moscow Region teams.  

JHC Spartak Moscow faced Dynamo Moscow major junior team – HC MVD. The arch-rivalry between two famous junior hockey schools moved from the ice to a maze full of puzzles and challenges. Team chemistry, team spirit and team work were just much in play as in any MHL regular season game.

Hockey quest named “Ice Battle” consists of three periods of play, which represented the three stages of hockey – past, present and future. There are four players per team. For every puzzle a team solves they get a puck. The teams hit the ice three times to compete in shooting accuracy and goaltending. The more puzzles the team solves and the more challenges they compete, the more pucks they will have to shoot at their opponents’ net and the better chance they have to win.

Team rosters:

JHC Spartak Moscow: Andrei Revatsky, Dmitry Zvyagintsev, Sergei Morozov, Alexander Avksentyev

HC MVD Balashikha: Nikita Alexandrov, Alexander Kovyrin, Dmitry Bukhryakov, Denis Ivanisov

Both teams did well completing challenges but when it came to shooting, Spartak prevailed. In the end MHC Spartak Moscow won 14-8.

“The game turned out to be very emotional. There were quite a few challenges and puzzles and a few of them posed some problems,” said the red-and-white forward Andrei Revatsky. “We had a decent time, gave our brains a good exercise and had a lot of fun. Most of all, we were competing not against our opponents but against one another. We didn’t like the way we played even though we won. There’s always room to grow.”

“It was a great quest. We’d never been on one before,” said HC MVD defenseman Dmitry Bukhryakov. “I would go as far as saying that you could feel the rivalry ambience. We didn’t score many goals because we didn’t have a good night’s sleep. So we missed a lot of shots. Besides, the commute from Balashikha was pretty long. It’s sad that we lost but we had a great time.”