In preparation for the Division 1A world championships in South Korea, the Hungarian national team will be playing host to two of the favorites to win promotion, Austria and Slovenia this coming weekend.
For head coach Rich Chernomaz and the rest of his staff the results are not as important as is the players showing that they have picked up the system that was installed during the 10 gruelling practices that they had over a span of five days. A year ago Chernomaz decided to go with a 1-3-1 to cover for the lack of depth on the blue line. Halfway through the tournament the coaching staff decided to switch to a 1-1-3 and they have stayed with it ever since.
“We stuck with the 1-1-3 because with our lack of depth with our defencemen, this way we have a forward back in support to help with our defencemen,” said Chernomaz when evaluating the system that his team will be playing in. “We felt it was the right way to play with two forwards attacking through the neutral zone and it is more of an effective way to play for us.”
Earlier in the week Chernomaz said that the squad that he will have for the weekend is 95% of what he will be taking to South Korea. In the goaltending department Bence Bálizs who was the emergency goalie last year and missed parts of the season because of injury, was sent packing. This leaves Peter Sevela, Zoltán Hetényi and Miklós Rajna to fight it out for the two goalie spots, with the third one becoming the emergency keeper.
For the defensemen the training camp ended early for Péter Hetényi and Dániel Kiss. Hetényi has played in the world championships once before and this would have been Kiss’ first time. From the forwards the 19 year-old Tamás Sárpátki was cut, again this was not much of a surprise.
One thing that Chernomaz has to figure out is how many defensemen and frowards will he be taking. On paper Árpád Mihály is listed as a forward but it has been confirmed that he will be playing defence in Goyang. With Mihály, Tamás Gröschl and Márton Vas all being forwards for almost all of their careers Cherno has the luxury of taking extra forwards and if an injury arises he would have his bases covered.
What all three of these former forwards have is size, and that is one thing that can not be coached.
“You want to have good size on defence, Mihály is someone that we will be able to move to the blue line along with Gröschl. Size is important but something else to take into consideration is the stick reach as well,” said Chernomaz.
With long time D-men leaving the national team such as Tamés Sille, Viktor Szélig and András Horváth there was a fear that the lack of depth could be the achilles of the team. Moving forwards back solves part of the problem, but luckily the other part has been filled with young players maturing. Two defensemen that have grown up to the task are Bence Szirányi and Arnold Varga. Chernomaz spoke highly of both of them: “Szirányi has made tremendous steps in his development, he is playing with a lot more confidence and he has been utilizing his assets which are his skating and his shot. Varga is a defenceman that has NHL size as well as NHL strength, he has developed a lot of confidence as well but with a twenty year old sometimes you have to live with the mistakes they make.”
If the Quad City Malllards make a deep run in the CHL playoffs then forward Gergő Nagy will not be joining the team. If Chernomaz decides to go with 13 , that means with Nagy out all the remaining forwards you make the team.
“I think that we have a number of talented forwards, with a number of them playing in top leagues, we will try to stick to the game plan and what the coaching staff has drawn up,” said Dániel Kóger.
The Austrian team that Hungary will be facing on Saturday will not exactly be the one that finished 10th at the 2014 Sochi olympics. A number of players will not be in the squad for various reasons. The playoffs in some North American leagues will take some players out, a couple have retired from international play and you always have injuries, but the last reason is kind of unusual. There are some players who were not picked as some sort of punishment for going partying during the winter games. Slovenia will also be missing some players because of the playoffs as well.
It will be interesting to see how the players fit into the system and if they know how to deal with adversity and find a way not to let teams blow them out.
Hungarian roster
Goalies: Zoltán HETÉNYI (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Miklós RAJNA (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), SEVELA Peter (DAB.Docler)
Defensemen: Balázs GŐZ (Morzina-Avoriaz), Tamás GRÖSCHL (DAB.Docler), Adrián HÜFFNER (DAB.Docler), Attila ORBÁN (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Tamás POZSGAI (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Bence SZIRÁNYI (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Viktor TOKAJI (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Arnold VARGA (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Márton VAS (Löwen FRANKFURT)
Forwards: Zsolt AZARI (DAB.Docler), István BARTALIS (TROJA Ljungby), András BENK (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), János HÁRI (HIFK Helsinki), Dániel KÓGER (ELMIRA Jackals), Csaba KOVÁCS (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Bálint MAGOSI (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Árpád MIHÁLY (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Gergő NAGY (QUAD CITY Mallards), Krisztián NAGY (EL PASO Rhinos), Benjámin NEMES (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Attila NÉMETH (SAPA Fehérvár AV 19), Balázs SEBŐK (Karpat Oulu), István SOFRON (KREFELD Pinguine), János VAS (HC ROUEN)
EIHC Hockey Gala
April 12., 16:00: Hungary-Austria
April 13., 18:00: Hungary-Slovenia
Divsion 1A world championships
April 20.: Hungary-Korea
April 21.: Hungary-Ukraine
April 23.: Hungary-Slovenia
April 24.: Hungary-Austria
April 26.: Hungary-Japan
Words: Szabolcs Závodszky @Zavodszky
Photo: László Mudra