Ilya Kovalchuk: "Our fans created an excellent atmosphere"

- What was missing today?

- We got nervous, lost a lot of pucks in our own zone, and didn't do a lot of things right. Nothing terrible has happened though, CSKA deserved to win as they had more chances. We need to make conclusions and move on.

- Why didn't you score late on in the third period with a man's advantage?

- I shot as I wanted, but the goaltender did his job and made the save. He made a lot of key saves today.

- Players at the team presentation said that it will pretty much be summer hockey. Is this true?

- We have been training for a long time, and have played a lot of games. Today was the first official match, and it was a repeat of last season's Western Conference final. They won, never mind.

- It looked as though Mikko Koskinen gave up a poor rebound for the final goal.

- He hasn't got anything to do with it. I made a mistake neutral ice, our defencemen had time to get back, we could have played the situation completely differently. Maybe our tiredness took its toll, maybe the fact that we were playing for a cup made it worse. I would like to thank our fans, they created an excellent atmosphere. We hope that other arenas will have such supporters too.

- In the second period and overtime, the first shift led to a goal. What is this connected to?

- We spoke before the second and overtime about how to play in our zone, how to move the puck into the attacking end. We had the puck, no one forced us into a mistake. We made mistakes though, and conceded.

- Did you not get too pumped up about the possibility of winning a trophy?

- No.

- Maybe this defeat is a blessing in disguise?

- No, we need to congratulate CSKA with their hard victory. We wanted to win as much as they did.