The MOL League semi finals started Wednesday night with Nové Zámky winning 4-2 at home and Brasov taking a road win from DAB.Docler in a 2-1 win.
Jordan Knox opened up the scoring scoring for Miskolc as he took a pass from Tyler Metcalfe and slipped it past Jan Chovan for the early 1-0 lead. Peter Polcik tied it up for Nové Zámky at 5:50 into the first period.
“I got a great pass from Martin Uhnák and took one timer from between the circles,” said Polcik. At 12:07 the big forward struck again as he skated in and fired a shot from the blueline for the goal.
“I took a slap shot from the blueline that went through the defensemen,” added Polcik. The first period itself was a rather clean one as each team had a 2 minute power play that they did not take advantage of.
The second period only had one goal with Pavel Kowalczyk beating Dávid Duschek for the goal and to make it 3-1. As expected in a close game the teams got a little chippy with Nové Zámky collecting 6 penalty minutes and Miskolc 4. Both teams finally capitalized on a power play, Roland Hajós made it 3-2 as Erik Weissmann was sitting for tripping. With just under 10 minutes left Pavel Kowalczyk scored his second goal of the game on the PP with Zalán Fliszár in the penalty box for hooking.
“It was a fast, tough game with a lot of body checks, we will be looking for a good result Thursday,” Polcik said after the game.
“It was very important that after they scored the first goal we get back into the game," said Nové Zámky coach Robert Spisák. "After that it was important that we scored goals at the right moments. This was a hard battle but I think that we were in control of the game all along."
South of the border in Dunaújváros things did not go as smoothly for the regular season champion. The sixty mintues was more of a goaltenders battle between Brasov’s Patrik Polc and DAB’s Peter Sevela.
The first period did not bring any goals as Kevin Wehrs and Ákos Kiss had a bit of a tussle of which the end result was roughing penalties, and DAB could not convert the only PP of the period.
The game picked up in the second period as Csanád Virág put a rebound in for the lead, like most of the season Juha Hietamäki has been doing all season, just throwing it on net and seeing what happens.
“I took a shot from the blue line and Virág was in the right place for the rebound,” said Hietamäki.
Twenty two seconds later Henrich Jabornik tied it up at 1-1 on an even strength goal. DAB had three different PP opportunities on the period but were not able to convert any of them for a goal.
In the third period Brasov kept on collecting penalty minutes and DAB was still unable to do anything with them. On the other side Brasov scored 7:29 into the third period when Róbert Péter’s shot ended up in the net behind Sevela which ended up being the winning goal.
“We have two very important matches to play before we play at home again, todays game was one of them,” said Brasov coach Kari Rauhanen after the game. "I am very happy for the win, we accomplished one of our goals which was to win the first of the three that we will to advance to the finals. This win was the result of great team work. I want to congratulate the boys and we are happy that no one was injured, we will be playing with a complete team Thursday.”
DAB's coach Stephan Lundh said “We had enough shots on net that should have won us the game, Brasov played very hard unfortunately we were horrible in taking advantage of our chances.”
Both playoff matchups continue where they left off on Thursday night at 18:00, Brasov at DAB and Miskolc at Nové Zámky.
MOL League semi finals, game 1
DAB-Brasov 1-2 (Brasov leads the series 1-0)
Nové Zámky-Miskolc 4-2 (Nové Zámky leads the series 1-0)
Words: Szabolcs Závodszky @Zavodszky
Photo: László Mudra