Roman Rotenberg speaks after playing Salavat Yulaev away

HC SKA head coach Roman Rotenberg:

“First of all, I want to point out that wonderful atmosphere inside the arena here in Ufa. We knew that it would be such an exciting game today, Salavat also love to play with the puck on their sticks. We conceded goals because of our own mistakes. Nevertheless, had Mikhail Vorobyov capitalised on his chance in the concluding minutes, we could have saved the game. We’ll now return to our principles for our upcoming games.

“We presented Ufa with too many counter-attack opportunities? We lost our team discipline and didn’t change shifts in time; our guys spent too long in attack instead of skating to the bench. The penalties taken by Tony DeAngelo and Evgeny Kuznetsov? As I have already said, we need to play with more discipline. I always speak with each player in our team individually.

“We also have to give credit to Salavat, they were excellent today and didn’t allow us to play our game. It’s a shame that Vorobyov couldn’t score at the end of the third period, the puck just flew too high. Mikhail has been great for us recently, when he’s in form he is one of the best players in the league. Hopefully he will convert his chances in our next matches.

“Yegor Zavragin? He isn’t to blame for the goals, our skaters shouldn’t have allowed the opponents to unleash those particular shots. Salavat’s foreign players? All players have their strengths, and of course their quality stands out. We’re trying to improve our defensive play with every passing match.”