SKA - Avtomobilist. Press-conference of game five

HC SKA head coach Roman Rotenberg:

- The first period wasn't good at all. However, we subsequently improved in the second, scoring excellent goals and dominating. Unfortunately, we were let down by a series of mistakes. I would like to thank the opponents for this series and our fans for the fantastic support. Although we managed to defeat Nizhny Novgorod in the first round, we lost a lot of our key players to injury. Our team has huge potential, but we need to take advantage of it and see games like this one out. The fact that we had to move to the SKA Arena before the Gagarin Cup playoffs took its toll and affected our results.

HC Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg head coach Nikolai Zavarukhin:

- There were a lot of goals, emotions and battles for the fans to enjoy. I'm really happy that even though we suffered setbacks in the second stanza, our players continued to follow our tactics and believe in themselves. Our PP goal towards the end of the second period provided our team with a huge boost. We're creating history for Yekaterinburg, this is the first time when we've reached the semi-finals! We must continue progressing thanks to our great teamwork.

HC SKA forward Pavel Dedunov:

- Even though we encountered difficulties at the start of the season, the team stuck together. If we look at today's game, we managed to recover from Avtomobilist's fast start and opened up a two-goal advantage, but then we lost our rhythm. We had full control of the match in the second frame, however we presented Yekaterinburg with a route back into proceedings. The problem in this series is that we lost our opening two home matches.

HC SKA forward Vasily Glotov:

- A key moment was game three; had we scored in overtime, the series would have turned out differently. In the maiden two matches here in Saint Petersburg, we lacked aggression and didn't crash the net enough. We were lacking quick passes? No, I don't agree with that, I think that our passing was fine. Overall, we controlled the puck well throughout this series. In terms of our aggression game four was the best, we played hard, displayed determination and were focused on taking the series back to Saint Petersburg. We possessed the momentum today at 4:2, but then we conceded a cheap goal at the end of the second period and let in two more markers in the third. We all believed in a positive outcome right until the very end.