Reaction after the 2021 WHL Opening Cup

Following the 2021 WHL Opening Cup, head coach of the under 18 Russian women's national team Alexander Syrtsov and manager of the Russian women's national teams Vladislav Prodan shared their impressions:

Russia W18 head coach Alexander Syrtsov:

- Due to the pandemic, we hadn't gathered the players together for a year and a half. As a result, we're quite pleased with the level of performance at this competition. The main task was to look at candidates for our team. In the matches against these strong opponents, we saw both the strengths and weaknesses of our players. A lot of the girls played at their level. Overall, I think that 95% of this roster will compete at the upcoming World Championship, we will play in a few more friendly games at our future training camps.

Russian women's national teams manager Vladislav Prodan:

- Our main goal was to see how the players can compete against the WHL's leading teams, they hadn't played together for a very long time. Our goalkeeping issue? Darya Gredzen and Yuliya Volkova are excellent goaltenders, Alisa Mashkova was here with a view to the future. We will call new players up to the next training camp, some of them couldn't be here due to injury problems. Of course, it's a shame that we can't compete in international matches at the moment due to the pandemic, the pace of the game is higher at that level. We will participate in two more training camps before the World Championship takes place. In December, our players will participate in friendly matches against Finland before the final stage of World Championship preparation subsequently begins.