Mikhail Kravets: Avangard was 200% ready for strong pressure from Ak Bars

On Thursday, October 5, Omsk hockey players played an away match of the KHL championship with Ak Bars in Kazan and lost 4:5 in overtime. At the press conference after the game, the head coach of the Hawks.

Kravets also said that he kept in mind the mood of Ak Bars – it was already upset due to previous defeats. And the great efforts of the Kazan team to win were expected.

“No matter where we play, we always have the same goal: first period, in the first shifts, immediately get into the game. “Ak Bars” lost three of the last four meetings, so we were sure that today it would be completely different than with “Severstal”. We were 200% ready for the fight and active actions of the opponent.

I believe that this Ak Bars is stronger than last year, because they retained almost all the best players, they added Yashkin, Zhafyarov – he did not play today, but I think the team has become stronger,” – First of all, the mentor noted.

The coach also added: the match even looked like a playoff series game. The fight was bone-to-bone, with good men’s play throughout the match. It’s good that at 3:4 the Omsk team equalized the score, but in general Avangard played the second part of the tour very well. And in terms of the quality of play over the last three matches, the hockey players have improved a lot.

“They begin to understand that the most important thing is to execute and play with discipline. Therefore, we are basically happy that we took one point from a very good opponent, and in a day the game is already at home – we will prepare for it.”– said the specialist.

Earlier we wrote how Mikhail Kravets appreciated winning game with Torpedo.