Valery Bragin: "We don't separate tournaments in terms of importance"

Head coach of the junior Russian national team, Valery Bragin, commented on the roster for the 2019 CIBC Canada Russia Series:

- The Super Series is an important and difficult tournament in terms of travel. It will be useful to see who copes with the difficulties. At the same time, the Four Nations competition in Finland will be played. The national team has one goal - to win every tournament, so we tried to make the teams as balanced as possible. Some of the players performed really well in Perm, and a lot have done excellently with their respective clubs.

We held consultations with the national team's management group, scouting and analytical departments, and we managed to evenly spread the players about. Each team will have its leaders, and all candidates have something to prove. We are counting on them showing all of their capabilities. The Super Series is a prestigious tournament, but we don't separate competitions in terms of importance - we will constantly be in contact with our colleagues.

Yury Babenko will be the head coach of the team which plays in Finland, with Sergei Golubovich working as his assistant. Both know the players well, and when the tournaments end, we will speak about what we have seen and we will begin to form the preliminary list for World Junior Championship preparation.