“AK Bars” is an elite club for which the defeat of “Admiral” in the second round of the Gagarin Cup will be a humiliation, the two-time Olympic champion tells KP Sport Vyacheslav Fetisov .
On Saturday, Ak Bars and Admiral beat respectively “Neftekhimik” And “Salavat Yulayev” in the first round of the Gagarin Cup. The teams will face off in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
– “Admiral” from Vladivostok is not a foreign club for you, which plays in the arena that bears your name. Do you follow its evolution?
– In Vladivostok at one time there was a negative – “Admiral” was asked in the KHL, the football club flew out of the major leagues, and in the Far East they asked: “Don’t “You don’t need us? Why do you reject the great sport region of the country. We’re like a cut piece.” And now we see an important event. The team with a minimal budget managed to eliminate the elite club of our hockey “Salavat Yulaev” from the playoffs and brought everyone so much joy.
– In the next round, “Admiral” is waiting for “Ak Bars”. Does Vladivostok have a chance of overtaking Kazan?
– The hockey playoff is a format in which it’s rare for the “Cinderella team” to rise very high. But I see that the “Admiral” has a system. The team has a competent coaching staff, and if you understand how to play this game, you will have a chance to hang on to the streak and start putting psychological pressure on Kazan. Ak Bars is an elite club, megastars play there, losing to Vladivostok would be a humiliation for them. And Admiral have nothing to lose, and they have already realized that such big clubs can be knocked out of the playoffs. And for Vladivostok, the specifics of flights, they are used to changing time zones, this is also their trump card.
The first games of the Gagarin Cup conference semifinals will take place on March 16 and 17.
Watch live broadcasts of matches of the Fonbet KHL Championship on the federal channel and thematic channels of the holding, as well as on the matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru websites.
KP Sports
Source : MatchTV
I’m Emma Smith, a dedicated journalist and avid storyteller. I have been writing for news websites for the past 5 years, reporting on hockey news and delivering in-depth analysis of the sport. In my current role as Author at Athletistic, I write about hockey events from around the world to keep followers up-to-date with what’s happening in the sport.
