Articles

RUSSIA – ESTONIA 5:1 (3:0)

January 5th, 2016, St. Petersburg, Peterburgsky SCC, 2000 spectators

Best players: Anton Terekhov, Cristofer Kuusma

Post match comments

Mihail Galaktionov, Head coach of team Russia:

– We are certainly satisfied with the win and with the comfortable score, though we are not happy about the scoring moments which were not converted into goals. We had some periods in the game when we passed the initiative to the opponent. This was in the situation which resulted in a penalty kick. We are a bit disappointed with the conceded goal. But in a whole, I am glad to see our players' attitude to the game. We are ready to move forward and we are preparing for the next game.

– 10 goals in two games! Has our team solved the problem of chances conversion?

– This means we have a good attacking line with a strong potential and with high individual skills that they are managing to show. These guys still need to add a little bit of aggression and to learn how to take initiative individually. We appraise this and we make the guys do this more often. We've had and we continue to have good moments, but so far we've been lacking the skills to make the score comfortable at once.

– You are criticizing your players more frequently in the interviews compared to the last year. Have you changed the mentoring tactics?

– We are growing and we are learning. Unfortunately we still have a number of drawbacks for we lack integrity and we lack skills. We need to be more demanding towards the players. Why is that? Because the team we are forming will be representing Russia on the European Championship, and the level there is very different. We won't have a right to make a mistake. And we won't have time to make corrections. That's why we need such tournaments – to learn. We are growing up every year and the expectations are higher. Let me repeat myself, we are paying much attention to build character and to unite the team. For instance, yesterday we were rooting for the Junior Ice Hockey team of Russia that showed their best skills and won in the semi-final over the US team. We are even showing special videos to the guys to raise their patriotic and team spirit.

– The current team has a quite experiential lineup. But there's another "our" team in the tournament – the team of Saint Petersburg. Are you following it?

– Of course! Our entire coaching team has watched St. Petersburg playing against Japan yesterday. We were positively surprised by the way some of the guys from St. Petersburg were performing. Yes, we had had them in the extended list of candidates before the tournament, but they were not included into the final squad due to various reasons. But having seen them in action personally yesterday, I can surely say that many of them could make our team stronger. They have all the chances to make this happen.

– Wouldn't two high score wins at the tournament start play a bad trick with our team?

– They shouldn't! We are constantly talking to the guys and we stress the importance of such moments. We are developing match-by-match. And we have certain objectives. I don't think that these wins will make our players relaxed. It's today already that we start to prepare for the next game with Moldova.

Marko Lelov, Head coach of team Estonia:

– We've had a very good start of the game today, far better than we'd had against Moldova. But unfortunately we have to admit the opponents were stronger and more skillful individually and that's why we have 1:5 as a result. I wish we didn't concede three goals during three minutes of the first half. In fact, we were disciplined, but this three minute disaster did not let us succeed.

– Taking a look at a starting lineup of your team, one could not say you went to play "a supporting role"...

– We did not have "play defense" in our game plan. The starting 30 minutes we were trying to play as good as Russia. We had chances and had the ball hitting the bar. We were indeed well-prepared for this match.

#9 Russia – Estonia