SKA - Spartak. Press-conference

HC SKA head coach Roman Rotenberg:

“Despite the result, our team didn’t lack desire. Unfortunately, after taking the lead early on, we subsequently committed mistakes when skating back towards our goal and allowed the opponents to score on the counter-attack. The guys who had been out with injuries struggled, but they need time.

“We have to admit that Spartak were better than us today. However, if we look at the overall season score, it’s 2-2 against this team. This was probably our worst performance of the lot. Artemiy Pleshkov needs time to get back to top form, that’s why we left him on the ice even when we started conceding several goals. We want Pleshkov, Yegor Zavragin and Pavel Moisevich to all be ready when called upon in the playoffs.

“Nine games remain before the playoffs begin, and we want to win all of our matches and stabilise our line-up. Are we worried about the possibility of being the seventh seeds for the playoffs? No. We were sixth in 2016, but we still went on to reach the semi-finals.”

HC Spartak Moscow head coach Alexei Zhamnov:

“Our guys did a good job by following the game plan. Why didn’t Ivan Morozov and Nikolai Goldobin play in the third period? They didn’t deserve to. We didn’t want to lose a second consecutive game today; we needed to achieve this win for our own confidence. The fact that we’ve qualified for the playoffs doesn’t make this victory any more important.

“We committed avoidable mistakes for the two goals which we conceded in the first frame. Nevertheless, even though we conceded goals, it was clear just how confident our players were. They played until the end and emerged victorious.”