World champion of the Russian national team Alexey Tereshchenko, St. He explained why St. Petersburg SKA lost the Gagarin Cup quarter-final series to Ekaterinburg Avtomobilist and left the tournament. His words guide the way “Sports Express”.
“As I said, SKA’s weakest link is defense. The fifth match showed this. The absence of injured players also had a negative impact. This is a matter of error. Teams that want to fight for the championship must win this match. In principle, SKA wanted this and Galkin was great, but Avtomobilist turned out to be stronger,” said Tereshchenko.
The fifth match of the series ended with Avtomobilist’s score of 5:4. Among the winners, Alexey Byvaltsev, Nick Ebert, Andrey Obidin and double pointer Alexey Makeev made accurate shots. Mikhail Vorobyov, Marat Khairullin and Arseniy Gritsyuk scored double goals for SKA. Thus, with four wins in the series, the score was 4-1 in favor of Avtomobilist.
In the semi-finals, Avtomobilist will play with the winner of the series Spartak (Moscow) – Metallurg (Magnitogorsk). After three matches, Metallurg is leading with a score of 2-1.
The current winner of the Gagarin Cup is CSKA. On the 100th anniversary of its establishment on April 29, 2023, the Ordu team won the cup by winning against Ak Bars Kazan in the seventh match of the final series. CSKA and Ak Bars will no longer be able to compete for the cup this season; both teams were eliminated in the first round of the play-offs.
Previously was named A turning point saw SKA eliminated from the Gagarin Cup.