BRATISLAVA, March 3 -- With two of the top three title contenders losing their Tuesday fixtures, Banska Bystrica's victory over their local rival hockey club of the Town of Zvolen enables it to build the lead on the top of the Tipsport Liga standings to 12 points.
With only five rounds left to play in the final stage of the regular season, the fight for the last two playoff spots remains unchanged as all three teams from the top of the lower group lose their match-ups.
The injury-plagued Slovan Bratislava's crisis deepens as the team from Slovakia's capital loses its fourth match in a row, getting crushed 5-0 by Poprad.
With five different scorers and Tomas Vosvrda's solid 27 saves on his fifth shutout of the season, Poprad jumped from sixth to the fourth spot in the standings, trailing third Kosice by 10 points.
Pierre-Luc Mercier assisted on four of the home team's goals.
Third-ranked Kosice Hockey Club also failed to score, losing 3-0 to a team that's in the zone, Dukla Trencin.
The visitors' goalie Michal Valent made a respectable 28 saves on his fourth shutout of the season, helping his team beat Kosice on the fifth try, at last.
Trencin is in fifth place in the rankings, tied with fourth placed Poprad with 93 points.
In the traditional central-Slovak derby, the reigning champion Banska Bystrica Hockey Club scored two goals within one minute in the second period to edge out neighboring Zvolen 2-1 in the end, cementing its position on top of Tipsport Liga with a 12-point lead and getting ever closer to securing the triumph in the regular season in advance.
Coaches on both sides praised Banska Bystrica's Canadian goalie Tyler Beskorowany who let only one puck of the 32 shots get passed him and lifted his team to the sixth consecutive victory.
The fight in Group B, the group of six teams that placed in the bottom half of the standings after the first stage of the regular season and are now fighting for the last two playoff spots, all the favorites surprisingly lost their duels on Tuesday.
Michalovce, the newcomer of the season which leads the pack with 78 points, lost in Nove Zamky 4-2.
The visitors who have no chance of reaching the upcoming playoffs managed to answer Nove Zamky's opening goal with two of their own but the home team rallied and turned the game around with three consecutive goals.
Miskolc, one of the two Hungarian teams playing in the Slovak premier league, did not take advantage of Michalovce's stumble and still trails it by three points after the last-ranked Detva managed to snap its four-game winning streak in a last-period rally when Rastislav Gaspar turned the game around by completing his hat-trick, scoring all the goals of the visitors in the 3-2 victory.
Elsewhere, Nitra had the chance to tie Miskolc's 75 points in the fight for the last playoff spot but also failed its mission, succumbing to the other Hungarian team, Budapest, 4-3.
The home team's Slovakian forward Tomas Klempa became the hero of the match, scoring the game-winner 90 seconds before the final siren, his second of the night.