Dinar Khafizullin: "It's always difficult to break CSKA's defence down"

HC SKA defenseman Dinar Khafizullin:

- As always, it was a tough game against CSKA Moscow. They scored in the second period, before icing it with an empty-netter. We have to score in order to win matches.

- When Maxim Shalunov scored with his shot in the second stanza, did the puck touch your stick?

- Yes, it did. I could have closed him down more. Maybe it wouldn't have been a goal if my stick wouldn't have deflected the puck.

- What is going wrong for SKA?

- We played a lot better today than in the first match. We weren't great in the first game, but we still can't score. We will work on this.

- CSKA are always winning matches at the moment if they score first.

- They always try to play the same manner of ice hockey throughout the 60 minutes, they were only more defensive in the last minute. It's always important to score the first goal in the playoffs.

- How can SKA work harder than CSKA but also score goals?

- Yes, you have to work hard, but you must score goals without conceding. At the moment, luck isn't on our side, but we're trying and in the maiden two periods we landed 13 hits compared to CSKA's zero. We had a lot of desire today.

- Can SKA play quicker?

- I think that we played well inside their zone today, there were chances and we made good deflections on the puck. We'll work on this more tomorrow, but it's always difficult to break CSKA's defence down.

- Why are SKA struggling on the powerplay in this series?

- We can't score any goals at the moment. The coaches will tell us how we can improve, we need to shoot more and block the goalkeeper's view. Lars Johansson often moves quite far out from his goal, so we need to make more unexpected decisions with the puck. We need to look at the video.