Russia U18 forward Yegor Sokolov: "Before ice hockey, I had figure skating training"

Russia U18 forward Yegor Sokolov:

- My main goal was always to become an ice hockey player, and for my family to be with me. However, I am not going to set any real targets for myself, I want to see how things turn out.

In my free time, I like to be with my girlfriend. Am I a romantic? Well, I like to give her red roses.

I have a younger brother who is 12 years old. He is also an ice hockey player, but he's a goaltender. My mother sometimes asks me to give him advice.

- If someone asks me to do something for them, I will always do it. An important part of my character is that I don't like losing. After a defeat, I travel home and analyse my mistakes and where we went wrong. I like to put things right for the next match.

- My first award? It was a victory at a tournament in Nizhny Tagil. Despite being in first place, I can't say that our opponents were very strong.

It was my parents' idea for me to start playing ice hockey. When starting out in the sport, I went to figure skating lessons in order to become a decent skater. In the evening, I would play ice hockey with my mother on a local rink. Later on, I joined the Yunost ice hockey school in Yekaterinburg. I played two years in defence, before the coaches told me to be a forward because of my goalscoring abilities. That was back in 2009.

- In Chelyabinsk, there is really high competition among players. When I joined my first team, we lost games by scores of 18:3 to a side with top players. I managed to get useful experience playing with them, enabling me to have success of my own.

Russian Ice Hockey Federation