Anton Belov: Avangard and Ak Bars will meet in the conference final as championship grandees

Thursday, March 30, Omsk hockey players held an open training before the playoff round against Ak Bars. After her, defender Anton Belov answered questions from the media at a press conference.

As the player noted, only the final of the conference will show how the tone of the team, which completed its round faster than Kazan, will affect.

The first responses were:

– Today, a lot of fans came to the stands. Are you surprised by this number? Does it add motivation, can you perform some exercises more responsibly with such a large number of spectators?

– We expected that there would be a large number of fans, we are already getting used to it. Arseniy shakes less (smiles), but still he does not train very responsibly. So hopefully it will add.

– Quite a long time ago, Avangard finished the series with Magnitogorsk. How did you manage to recover, reboot, and is there a feeling that your tone may be a little lost? How is the preparation going?

– It’s a question we’ve been preparing for because it’s always asked when a series ends quickly. How will this affect future games? You never know if it’s good or bad, but we had a few days off. There were guys who needed to recover, to heal. Now almost everything is ready. We trained well, we already understand what the schedule is between rounds. The last days of training are more focused on our next opponent: we start working out exits from the zone, playing in the middle, in attack, minority, majority. Starting from today, we have already begun to prepare for Ak Bars.

The defender also answered what moments he and his colleagues worked on the most in the current pause.

“The first two days are days off, then we went out for a couple of days from this weekend: there were workouts that were more focused on aerobic exercise, to breathe. At the end of the training there were exercises – the circles ran.

Further, Anton said, the players “breathed”, and from March 30 they began to analyze the tactics of the “leopards”. On Friday there will be a review of the game “5 on 5”.

MK in Omsk still asked about the completed series with Metallurg – they didn’t give the opponent a chance, on the one hand it was unexpected, on the other, it’s still logical if you look at the content of the matches.

For the team itself, it was not so unexpected. And, Belov believes, there is no need to be deceived or fall into euphoria from a 4-0 score. All matches were stubborn, at any moment everything could turn the other way. Probably, the Omsk people were a little fresher, a little more successful. And Magnitogorsk left its main forces in the first round.

“I don’t think the 4-0 score fully reflects this series: yes, we were stronger, but everyone saw the games.”

There was also a question about the future confrontation between the goalkeepers of Avangard and Ak Bars. According to the player, now it is a thankless task to compare players from the outside.

“Now is the final of the conference, the generally recognized giants of our championship are meeting, regardless of what is happening around. Regardless of the fact that both teams started very difficult in September. It was clear that both teams would get out of this difficult situation, and now, as an indicator, we meet in the conference finals. Let’s see, everyone will try to show their best hockey, not only field players, but also goalkeepers, ”said Belov.

Earlier also we wrote about the answers to journalists of Avangard head coach Mikhail Kravets about preparations for the conference finals.