Reaction after beating Belarus at the 2018 ALROSA Cup

Russian Olympic team defenseman Alexei Vasilevskiy: - The opponents defended excellently and their goalkeeper grew in confidence as the match wore on. It seemed that Belarus were stronger than Norway yesterday. We had less rest that the Belarusians, but that can't be used as an excuse. In the first period, we should have played with more energy. Thank you to our goalkeeper Igor Saprykin, who helped us a lot today. We had chances to score a lot more goals than just the one. Overall, today was tougher than the game on Thursday. Austria have their main players here, so we will have a rest and prepare for the match, the coaches will tell us how to play. It would be great to win the competition at home again, thank you to the fans for their great support. Russian Olympic team forward Denis Zernov: - We lost a lot of energy today and couldn't capitalise on our scoring opportunities. It's great that we won, however we gave the opponents opportunities of their own and our goalkeeper saved us. The Belarusian goaltender didn't do anything special, we simply shot the puck directly into him. It was nice to be called up to the national team and keep my season going, I hadn't thought of playing here. Russian Ice Hockey Federation