Viktor Tikhonov: "I got lucky with my goal"

- How important was it to thrash Ak Bars?

- The main thing is that we won, it doesn't matter if the score is 1:0 or 6:1. We played well and stuck to our game plan.

- What's the difference between working with Ilya Vorobyov and Oleg Znarok?

- There are differences, but taking into account the fact that they worked together, there are similiarities too. I think that people who understand ice hockey can see them.

- Was your goal something which you worked on in training?

- Following the faceoff draw, the puck fell on to the tip of my stick, however my shot wasn't very strong. 99 times out of 100 that wouldn't have gone in and I don't know if the goalkeeper didn't see the puck travelling towards him. I got lucky with the goal.

- All of SKA's goals could have been stopped by Emil Garipov.

- It's hard to blame the goalkeeper. We have to point out the ice too - the puck bounced around for both us and Kazan. It wasn't the netminder's day.

- Did Ak Bars stop giving 100% after SKA's third goal?

- Ak Bars are the KHL champions, they know how to make comebacks from 1:2 or 1:4 down. Last year, they came from behind to win lots of matches, so we made sure that we never took our foot off the gas.

- Vasily Tokranov used to play for Ak Bars Kazan. Did he tell SKA players where to shoot against Emil Garipov?

- Yes, he showed us some schemes to use, but it's hard to make comparisons between these two teams. His tips helped.

- Why were SKA better prepared for the Finnish sized ice rink than Ak Bars?

- We simply really wanted to win and the players did everything in order to win, in defence we performed excellently. We showed our best game.