Mikhail Kravets: “Today Avangard beat a very serious team”

On Friday, October 13, Avangard at home in good style defeated Dynamo Moscow 3:0 in the KHL championship match. The meeting was appreciated by the head coach of our team, Mikhail Kravets.

The specialist also noted that even he was nervous at the start, since Omsk residents were not always on equal terms with their opponents. But then things improved and the meeting was confidently led to victory.

– Happy victory to everyone – the fans, the team. Today we beat a serious opponent, and in a tough fight. You could say they returned the favor for the game that took place in Moscow. It was necessary to act competently here, including in standard simple situations. It was a little scary at the beginning of the first period, because not everything worked out. But the guys are great. We held out, fought back, then took the initiative and generally moved the puck into the opponent’s zone. We played there a lot and did everything right. We scored good goals. The game in the minority, in the majority, the decisive moments – everything was at a very good level. Successful goalkeeper game. All this gives the team an incentive to play even better.

But in any case, this match is just a small step forward, there are still many more games to come. Today we are happy, resting and tomorrow we are preparing for the next match.

– Both in the last match and in this one, as you noted, Avangard showed itself to be rather restrained in the first period. Is there a conscious design to this? Or did you have to push away from your opponent?

– No, there is no idea here. In previous matches – on the road – we started well, and then there were failures. But in any case, that’s not the point. We always take the first period seriously and ask the guys to play correctly in these shifts. Play accurately, actively, try to go into someone else’s zone. This doesn’t always work out. Somewhere the opponent plays better. At these moments you just need to play good defense so that your opponent spends energy on breaking it and attacking it. And that’s what we did in the second period – we moved the puck into someone else’s zone and decided the fate of the match.

– Was there a temptation, when it was 3:0 after the second period, to go into deep defense, just to close down and not give the opponent a chance to score?

– Of course, we said that we need to play correctly, we don’t need to lose the puck on our blue line, on someone else’s, so that the puck goes deep, there are no passes through the center of the ice. But there was no specific task to close. We continued to play with our tactics, it was just more restrained, the player in front was active, and the other four worked from behind – all throw-ins, transfers. She also helped to move from defense to attack. And from the zone during the throw-in. This succeeded and brought success.

– It turns out that for two matches in a row we have managed not to fail in the third period, not to allow the opponent to equalize the score at the end of the period. That is, to avoid a big problem that happened last season and this one. To what extent do even just two such fights inspire optimism for the future?

– Let’s just say that every game is different. There were cases when we had an advantage and conceded in the third period. But it wasn’t always like this because we didn’t guess who to release or how to play. Often this is decided by the skill of the opponents. But also, of course, discipline, fulfillment of the game task by everyone. At this stage, all the guys coped with it. Despite the fact that, if you noticed, one shift was such that we could not leave our zone for a long time, especially at the end of the period. But no one made a mistake, everyone stood on their feet, everyone fought back, and calmly and competently finished the game in defense.

– Will you continue to put Proskuryakov in goal while he is playing? Or will there be some other options?

– I think that he will play in the next match.

– How is forward Pavel Kulikov’s condition now? He hasn’t played for a long time…

– We count on him in principle. But for now he just doesn’t make it into the lineup.

Previously we wrote how Kravets appreciated the victory over Magnitogorsk October 11.