UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 5, 2016. Sputnik, a hockey team sponsored by Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation, spoke about its winter 2015/2016 performance at a recent press conference, the corporation’s press service reports.

According to the hockey club representatives, despite the relatively bad luck at the start of the season, the team managed to make it to the play-off and nearly made it to the next round of the Bratina Cup, losing to Neftekamsk’s three-time championship winner Toros.

‘There was a great surge of positive emotion at the end of the championship, and some time was needed to recover. These were emotions that we lacked to perform, but in the end, it all worked out very nicely. In the meantime, some of the players left because of injuries,’ said the team’s manager Andrei Kirdyashov.

The club director Alexander Balbashev said the new season’s goal was to keep up with the current efforts.

‘We’ll try to ensure there are more players from Nizhniy Tagil on the varsity team. Special attention will be paid to our children’s hockey school, where things do not look as good as we’d like right now and changes are badly needed. I believe the number of locals on Sputnik team will go up,’ Balbashev said.