Valery Bragin: We wanted to win more

Head coach of the Russian junior national team Valery Bragin gave his views after the 2016 World Championship win over the USA:

- We've taken another tough win, at the start of this match we were losing. I didn't need to pump my team up for this match, they understood the situation themselves. We analysed how to beat the Americans, and we got the win. We've again qualified for the final? What's bad about that? Today, apart from a rare few exceptions, everyone played the right way. This is pleasing. We didn't do that well on the powerplay, their goaltender played great, and we had to score dirty goals. 

I decided that Ilya Samsonov would play in this game after the match with Denmark. The fact that he played against the USA in April also had a bearing.

I never head any doubt in my mind about calling up Egor Korshkov. In all the tournaments in which we have played, he has been one of the leaders. He has been nervy here, but in the deciding moment he became a true leader. Getting into the final is the main target set for every tournament, in the final it is 50/50. Today, I think that we wanted the win more. I wouldn't say that we have bigger players, we have an unexperienced team just like the Americans. Our team has never won big tournaments.

Russian Ice Hockey Federation