Press conference after SKA defeated Shanghai at the Ice Palace

HC SKA head coach Igor Larionov:

"I would like to congratulate our team with the victory and Valentin Zykov with his hat-trick! Even though Shanghai had long lost all hope of qualifying for the playoffs, they still tried hard today. The regular season has flown by, but now we have to immediately switch our attentions to the Gagarin Cup playoffs. The best part of the season is beginning!"

Why Brendan Leipsic and Joe Blandisi didn't play...

"There's no need to worry, their health is fine. We decided to just give them a rest today."

Pavel Koledov's return...

"I had initially told him that I wasn't going to allow him to play today. However, my assistants Yuri Babenko and Boris Mironov told me after training this morning that Pavel was ready. Pavel and I subsequently had a conversation, and he said that he felt good and had no pain anywhere. He ended up racking up more ice time than we had originally planned!"

Facing CSKA Moscow in the playoffs...

"We never choose our opponents. That would be the worst possible thing to do in professional sport. We have to take the positives from the regular season, get rid of the negatives and compete against these opponents in the correct manner. We'll discuss our line-up and CSKA in our briefing tomorrow."

HC Shanghai Dragons head coach Mitch Love:

"The season's over, so it's time for us to embark on a fresh start. My explanation for what happened today is that we have a lot of work ahead of us. It's obviously not the result which we had been looking for, but it has been like this for a long time."