KHL rank outsiders Nizhnekamsk and Lev Prague maintained their confident start to the 2012-13 season, both posting wins to lead in the East and West, respectively.
Three weeks into the regular season, there were also heavy defeats for last season's Gagarin Cup finalists Avangard Omsk and reigning champion Dynamo Moscow .
Two road victories in three days left Neftekhimik, a team from the Tatarstan region that failed to make the postseason last year, atop the Eastern Conference.
A 3-2 overtime win over Barys Astana in the Kazakhstan capital on Monday was followed by a 3-2 penalty shots away win over Torpedo Nizhniy Novgorod.
Avangard, which went down 6-2 to Neftekhimik last week, was further hampered by two-time champion Ak Bars Kazan on Monday as home Arena Omsk witnessed a 5-0 trouncing of the home team.
Ak Bars in third keep up the pressure on second-placed Sibir Novosibirsk, which beat Spartak Moscow 5-3 in regulation.
Last regular season’s champion Traktor Chelyabinsk registered a 4-1 on-the-road win over Gagarin Cup holder Dynamo, with Jan Bulis scoring twice. Both teams are now fifth in their respective conferences.
In the Western Conference, Lev routed Dynamo Minsk 4-0 to reinforce its lead in the table while second-placed Atlant Moscow Region visited Yaroslavl to overcome the reformed Lokomotiv 2-1.
Big-spending CSKA Moscow labored to a 5-4 win over Vityaz Chekhov after eight penalty shots to go fourth in the standings, while Vityaz is last with four losses in six games.
SKA St. Petersburg suffered its second defeat in a row, at the hands of newcomer Slovan Bratislava 4-2. Milos Riha’s team is now sixth in the West.
It was the last round of KHL games without the participation of locked out NHL players as the deadline for averting a lockout passed last week
It sparked a flurry of signings, the highest-profile of which include Evgeni Malkin's return to Metallurg Magnitogorsk, Alex Ovechkin’s to Dynamo Moscow and Ilya Kovalchuk to SKA St. Petersburg.
Locked out players can start playing in the KHL on Thursday, KHL president Alexander Medvedev said.
