Press conference after SKA comfortably beat Barys at the Ice Palace

HC SKA head coach Igor Larionov:

“I would like to congratulate our guys with their strong performance and victory. It’s always nice when the players start scoring goals, they consequently gain in confidence which is vital. There are aspects of our game which require improvement, though.”

Sergei Plotnikov’s hat-trick and Nikolai Goldobin’s four assists…

“We’re happy when we score goals. However, I told the guys afterwards that we committed too many mistakes. Strong opponents like Yaroslavl or Dynamo Moscow would have taken advantage of them. Yes, we’re satisfied that we won 7:0 today, but there’s no need for euphoria: we understand who we were playing against. With all due respect to Barys, they’ve long lost hope of qualifying for the playoffs. I wouldn’t draw any real conclusions from this game from our point of view.”

Injury issues…

“Sergei Ivanov wasn’t in the line-up today having felt a pain in his throat. Vladislav Romanov, Igor Larionov Junior and Nikita Zaitsev won’t travel with us for the upcoming road trip, they’ll stay here and should be ready for action again next week. Ignat Lutfullin from the VHL will join us instead.”

HC Barys Astana head coach Mikhail Kravets:

“The score speaks for itself. Unfortunately, we only stuck to our game plan for the opening six minutes. We then subsequently competed without character and quality across all zones. In my opinion, this was our worst showing of the season.”