A hat trick from Slovakia's Marcel Hossa helped lift former NHL MVP Jaromir Jagr's squad of foreigners over an all-Russian team 7-6 in the Continental Hockey League's All-Star game on a bitterly cold evening in Red Square on Saturday. Adept goaltending by Robert Esche and former Ottawa Senator Ray Emery also helped Jagr's team withstand a late comeback by a Russian team featuring another former NHL star in Alexei Yashin. As temperatures dropped to minus 16 degrees Celsius (3 degrees F), spectators were left shivering in the grandstands at the open-air rink in the heart of the Russian capital. With the Kremlin walls as backdrops, the match was designed to be a showcase for the KHL, the Russian-based league. “The (baseball) All-Star game in Yankee stadium is special, and the Russians want to do something special, too,” Jagr, who joined the Siberian team Avangard Omsk last year, said before the match. He hoped for a high-scoring game for the sake of the fans - and he got it. Hossa, who plays for Latvia's Dinamo Riga, opened the scoring in the first period, and his second goal gave the foreigners a 4-2 lead with less than five minutes left in the second period. The Russians came back with two goals before the period was over - including one from CSKA Moscow's Oleg Saprykin with just more than one second left to play. In the third, Saprykin scored again to put the Russians ahead for the first time, but Jagr's countryman Jan Marek of Metallurg Magnitogorsk made it 5-5 on a penalty shot and the teams traded goals again before Hossa beat Russian goalkeeper Konstantin Barulin with just over one minute left in the match. Also scoring were Denis Kulyash, Alexander Radulov and Sergei Mozyakin with two goals for the Russians. For the international team, former Washington Capitals defenseman Ben Clymer, Jaroslav Kudrna and Pavel Brendl added goals. Yashin thanked the 2,500 spectators who braved the conditions and nearly filled the grandstand, roaring for a Russian victory.
