Both HC Minsk’s women and men will topped the regular season tables in Belarus following the latest series in their championships. 

For the women, they ran up two wins over Victoria Smolevichi over the wekeend, starting off with a 6-2 success and then backing it up with a 3-1 victory. 

The former saw the goals shared around with Anastasia Sys, Anastasia Syroezhko, Krestina Papkova, Olga Kurovskaya, Victoria Sidorova and Eugenia Kernoz. 

In game two, Marina Nikitina, Syroezhko and Ksenia Efimenkova all fired home second half goals to confirm top spot in the group stages, one point ahead of Ritm Grodno. Smolevichi sit in third place and will play Grodno in the playoffs while Minsk meet Tekstilshchilk in their semi-finals. 

Minsk coach Nikolai Sankovets said of the weekend results: “I really liked the first game with Victoria. Almost everything turned out the way we planned on the field.  

“Our opponent were not themselves and allowed us a lot of freedom. We now draw a line under the regular season and are satisfied with how things have gone, going ahead of our rivals but we do need to improve in the playoffs.” 

On the men’s side, Minsk were comfortable winners over their feeder team SDUSHOR Minsk RCOP with a 9-0 win in game one and then a 9-2 success in game two with Alexander Goncharov getting four goals over the weekend. 

Coach Sergey Drozdov said: “We have achieved an initial goal and shown a good level. Now we look forward to the playoffs but anything can happen there.”