Russian national team coach Oleg Znarok intends to check out as many players from the KHL as possible and continues to do so this week with pre-competition games against Slovakia.

When the team returns to its base Novogorsk at the outskirts of Moscow, some of the current players will be cut and eight NHL players will join the team with goaltenders Sergei Bobrovski, Semyon Varlamov, defenceman Alexei Yemelin and forwards Sergei Kalinin, Nail Yakupov, Viktor Tikhonov, Sergei Plotnikov and Alexander Burmistrov.

At the end of the month the Russians will play two more exhibition games at the 2016 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship venue in Moscow against Finland.

The roster for this week’s camp in Slovakia includes:

Goaltenders: Igor Ustinski, Igor Shestyorkin, Alexander Sharychenkov.

Defencemen: Albert Yarullin, Ziat Paigin, Yegor Yakovlev, Ilya Lyubushkin, Anton Belov, Vyacheslav Voinov, Yaroslav Dyblenko.

Forwards: Vladislav Kartayev, Andrei Loktionov, Maxim Karpov, Danil Apalkov, Vladimir Galuzin, Yegor Averin, Nikita Gusev, Vadim Shipachyov, Yevgeni Dadonov, Sergei Shumakov, Maxim Shalunov, Stepan Sannikov.