This season CSKA U15 players born in 2006 won Moscow Open Championship and Russian Championship in their age group. And 12 CSKA players played for Russian and Moscow teams at the Sirius Cup which ended last week in Sochi. The Moscow team coached by Pavel Anatolievich won the tournament.
- It was an important and responsible tournament for the guys. At the same time it was very hard. Now we are at an age when they are growing up, and we still give them a workload. It turns out that the children have no rest. We have one tournament after another. This season we had the Moscow championship on a tight schedule in March and April; then we played the Russian championship and then again all the strongest players came to the Sirius Cup in Sochi. It was a very intense period.
- Whom of the Army team can you highlight in this tournament in terms of play?
- I will only speak for the Moscow national team players, because I coached them. On our team, I can mention Ivan Okunev, Timur Kola and Maxim Zaitsev whose patronymic is Pavlovich (there are two Maxim Zaitsevs on the CSKA team - editorial note).
- The Moscow team won all the matches in the tournament. Was it a clear advantage over your opponents?
- No, all the matches were hard. All the best from the regions were taken into the Russian national team, so the teams were more or less even. And every match was tense, even against the Urals Federal District, which we won 7-2. It's just that, apparently, the guys approached the game more seriously than the Urals team on that day.
- In two years, the 2006 players will graduate from school. Can we already say about the leaders of this age, and that they will be able to prove themselves in the MHL and then in adult hockey?
- This age is the most unpredictable. You can be a leader now, and in six months they won't even remember you. Now children are growing rapidly, they are literally changing before their eyes. There are a lot of examples when almost everyone was talking about a person a year before graduation, and when he graduates, they don't even take him to an MHL club. This happens almost every year when children graduate. And there are guys who play in the third or fourth line, and at graduation they are one of the first to be offered a contract. It’s hard to make any predictions right now because of that unpredictability.
- Do you already have plans for the preseason?
- Of course, they were formed a long time ago. On June 9 we are going to the training camp at the base near Nizhny Novgorod, and the preseason training will begin. Those players, who played in the Sirius Cup, will have only 12 days break from hockey. In August we plan to play in annual tournaments such as "Proryv" and Krutov Cup.
