Evgeny Kuznetsov is a character and he’s going viral again for something honest he said after Russia beat Italy 10-0.
Last Wednesday, Kuzy had his biggest game of the tournament so far, tallying two goals and two assists on an overwhelmed Italian team. After the game, Sport Express’s Alexei Shevchenko asked Kuznetsov if it was “interesting at all to play the Italian team?”
Here’s what Kuznetsov said in response.
“Italy, you know what kind of opponent they are,” Kuznetsov said as translated by Igor Kleyner. “One of their players was frequently lining up against me on faceoffs, he was very nervous. I could see the guy has a problem with faceoffs. So I told him to put his stick on top of mine. After that, he beat me on faceoffs a couple of times. Afterwards, he was skating, smiling.”
Shevchenko replied, “Are you serious?”
“Why not, I would never reject anybody in need of help!” Kuznetsov said.
The IIHF keeps track of faceoff statistics in the tournament, but it does not publish game logs where it reports how many faceoffs a player won or lost in a specific game.
So while it’s impossible to verify what Kuznetsov said, I’m definitely going to take his word for it 100 percent.
S/T to Sigi S. who first gave us a heads up on the quotes on Wednesday and Ann M. who forwarded us the Reddit Link in email.
Headline photo via LysenkovTV
