Vyacheslav Bykov News and Interviews

Today the Russian Hockey Federation announced that the team coaches Vyacheslav Bykov and Igor Zakharkin will continue working with the Russian National team.

"Their work with the team was found to be satisfactory," said Vladislav Tretiak to Sovetskiy Sport. "Soon we will meet to discuss the details of the new contract."

This season was very unsuccessful for Russia as it suffered two major losses: in the Olympics' quarterfinal against Canada (3:7) and in the World Championship final against the Czech Republic (1:2).

After the 2-1 loss to Czech Republic in the 2010 World Championship in Germany, Vyacheslav Bykov gave an interview to the popular Russian website Sovietsky Sport. Bykov stated that the sixty percent of today's roster will be playing in the 2014 Olympics, talked about his future with the Russian national team, tried to analyze the reasons of the defeat and also talked about the foreigners policy within the KHL.

Team Russia coach, Vyacheslav Bykov, gave an interview to Sovetskiy Sport where he talked about the quarterfinal game between Russia and Canada.

RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation.

Bykov: "I would like to congratulate Canada with this victory. Unfortunately, the Olympic Games are over for us. I would like apologize to our fans. Today we faced a very strong team. We couldn't get out of their pressure since the very beginning. It was really hard. We tried different variants to change the game and move it to the opponent's zone, but we failed. Canada demonstrated very interesting hockey. It was a pleasure to watch them, and I can't say the same about our team."

- Maybe the reason of the loss is that the Russian players visited some parties recently?

Russian coach Vyacheslav Bykov talked about the reasons of the loss to Slovakia, stated that not all players had passion, explained why Alexander Ovechkin had three shootout attempts and talked about power play units in an interview to the Russian site gazeta.ru.

RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation.

- Do you agree that only the Zaripov-Zinoviev-Morozov line displayed some teamwork?
Bykov: "You are not far from being right. We will try and find out why it happened. I don't think that our players didn't want it. It's just that the opponent didn't give us many opportunities. But I also should notice that a lot of players lacked passion and thirst for game. At the same time I agree that it wasn't our day."

Team Russia head coach Vyacheslav Bykov in an interview to Sport-Express explained why he didn't invite Alexei Yashin to the national team.

Bykov: "Why didn't we include Yashin in our Olympics' candidate list? We need different energy from the one he displayed in the Eurotour, where he disappointed us. We have no conflicts with Alexei. I know that it made him feel bad but that's life."

Most likely Yashin won't play at the Olympics in Vancouver.

Translated by RussianHockeyFans.com

Team Russia head coach Vyacheslav Bykov had an interview with Sport-Express in which he discussed many things about the Olympics and the Russian national team.

RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation of the most important parts:

- I think that among the top teams only Finland has little pressure. The Americans will try hard to show that they aren't inferior to Canada and thus they'll do all the possible to disappoint their neighbors. Pressure on the Canadians is heavy, since they play at home and they got to the last two WC finals. It's heavy also on Sweden, because they the reigning Olympic champions. Czech Repubblic will have to deal with pressure too, they didn't manage to repeat their Nagano triumph and people still haven't forget it. People will demand a lot from us too. In this sense probably Team Finland can play more quitely. But everything depends not on the pressure itself, but on how you can deal with it.

-Would you call the silver medal a failure?
Absolutely. Anyone who goes to the Olympics want to get the Gold.