The head coaches of the CSKA and the Torpedo summed up the game.
Igor Nikitin, head coach of the CSKA:
– Games like this are tough to play, no matter what the score is. So it's crucial to stay locked in. In that regard, the guys were great.
– Personally, what did you like most about your game tonight? What stands out more tonight – the team's offensive firepower once again, or how you responded to the opponent's chippy play?
– Character is part of the game, so it’s all fair. I liked the way we responded after being down 4-0 after the first. I liked that we kept playing as a team. That's why I say, even though the score makes it look easy, it wasn't an easy game.
Kostin might have crossed the line a bit there, and in a bigger game, those emotions could end up costing us. Will you talk to the guys in the room about keeping their emotions in check and not getting carried away?
– To me, it looked like their guy, number eight, showed he wanted to go at first, and then he just bailed. And Klim’s already fired up.
– On that fifth goal, when we scored on the power play, you saw that in the first 30 seconds or so, we had four or five shot attempts on net. With CSKA, do you guys have an internal benchmark for how quickly you want to get your first shot on net? Or is it all just going by feel, how the guys get into it?
– We have no timing right now. Just a game plan. Finish every play with a shot. We played against a well-coached team that’s skilled not only offensively, but defensively as well. So just moving the puck around with them felt pretty much like being on the second power-play unit. We moved around for two minutes with zero scoring chances. A good shot breaks any system. The key is jumping on the rebounds. We controlled the rebounds, and that’s why it worked out.
Alexey Isakov, head coach of the Torpedo:
- We had a rough first period. The guys battled hard and tried to turn the game around. But we must acknowledge that we were not prepared for the game. It’s a good wake-up call for us that we need to clean up some things in our game. There were definitely some things we didn't like out there. We need to be a completely different team by the next game against CSKA. We’re not hanging our heads. Games like this happen. Our job is to analyze the game with a cool head. On the scoreboard, that’s our worst first period, but play-wise, I wouldn't say that – we've definitely had worse. We knew what kind of road trip we were in for. But zero points is just unacceptable. To stay at the top, we gotta win more games. We'll keep pushing. I don't think the next game is gonna be a blowout. Every game has its own script, and that’s just how it went tonight. It'll be a different score, and the teams will play differently. We just go out and play our game. We needed to slow down in the timeout to figure out what wasn't working. I told the boys to settle down and stick to the game plan. Good to win the third period, especially heading into the next game. The team played till the final buzzer and showed real grit.
