Dynamo hockey players have once again beaten rivals from CSKA in their second Moscow derby of the KHL season.

­The hosts easily put their noses in front when they were awarded a 4-on-3 powerplay in the fifth minute.

And Maksim Soloviev found himself unmarked on the spot and fired the puck into the net, 1-0.

The game stayed tight in the second and the third periods with few scoring opportunities for either side.

Dynamo’s home ice is at Luzhniki in central Moscow, but some of their top-flight encounters are played at the much bigger and more comfortable Megasport arena nearby.

“If you have a great big arena like this and all the games are played in there, it’ll become THE place where hockey is played,” said Canadian journalist Alexandre Pouliot-Roberge. “And if you play in one place or another and you change often, people won’t get into the habit of seeing it played there.”   

Eight minutes before the final buzzer, CSKA's Petr Caslava and Denis Tolpeko from Dynamo decided to put on the gloves and change sports to boxing.

The fight should have fired up the players to attack, but Dynamo's Alexander Yeremenko was like a brick wall between the pipes to record his third shutout of the season.

The Armymen staked everything for an equalizer, pulling the goaltender and leaving the goal wide open for Dynamo to kill off the game. Janne Jalasvaara scored an empty-netter to seal the final 2-0 win.

“There might have been less tension than normal for a derby, but still the game was very tough and we were eager to win tonight after two straight loses,” Dynamo’s Sergey Konkov said. “Fortunately, we won. And we played much more accurately in defense,” he added.     

“It wasn't easy to win. The calendar was drawn so that we have lots of cross-city clashes in the first part of the campaign. But next year we'll have fewer encounters with our rivals,” Konkov’s partner, Sergey Soin, added.

After the game, both sides kept their positions in the rankings.

Dynamo broke their two-loss run and now sit third in the Western Conference, behind SKA Saint-Petersburg and Dynamo Minsk, while CSKA are 11 points behind the Blue-and-Whites in sixth place.