ALROSA Cup. Press-conference

On April 27th, a press-conference was held at Saint Petersburg's Yubileyny Arena before the start of the ALROSA Cup.

Deputy RIHF director Alexei Kireev:

- This tournament began in 1975. Since then, the name has changed on regular occurance, but the Leningradskaya Gazeta was the most popular. Cooperating with ALROSA, we have started this tournament up again and it is something important both for the city and for the country. Since our agreement with ALROSA was made, we have created a lot of programs designed to develop ice hockey. Some include providing equipment for children and our "Russia Hockey Makes Dreams Come True" project. I am sure that this competition will become an important step in our cooperation, and that the ALROSA Cup will be held yearly again.

Chief of the working with media department for ALROSA Andrei Matveev:

- ALROSA is the world's largest diamond extraction company in the world. They are extracted from Yakutiya. As you can see, a diamond is on our company logo. Our company supports a lot of programs, but the RIHF is the biggest. This is down to our desire to return former glories to Russian ice hockey. We want our national teams to be in first place of international tournaments.

Russian Olympic team head coach Oleg Bratash:

- We are very grateful to the ALROSA company for giving this tournament another life. It's important for me, because I played for the USSR Olympic team at the Leningradskaya Gazeta competition. When I took charge of the Russian Olympic team, I suggested to the RIHF about organising this tournament again. The Olympic team was created one year ago, and our goal is to train young players ahead of the jump into the senior team.

Russian Ice Hockey Federation