Ferencváros Preview

Icehockey.hu continues their MOL League preview series, this time with legendray hockey club Ferencvárosi TC. The green eagles hope to end a three year playoff drought and make it to the quarterfinals for the first time in MOL League history.

Ferencváros has been a constant revolving door with coaches and imports as well. The club is on their third coaching staff in three season. Last years head coach Ferenc Szakács is helping out Greg Lindqvist, who should be a familiar name to MOL League fans since he has already managed Brasov and Miskolc in the MOL League. Coach Lindqvist has a particlur style that has a positive effect on his players. Lindqvist has a number of former players in the Fradi locker room in Krisztián Budai, Juha Hietamaki, Vladimir Dubek and Attila Rafaj. This season Lindqvist was responsible to bringing in the import players with the management putting together the Hungarian side of the squad. It is well known that the club has some financial issues and can not go after the same type of players as some of the top clubs.

THE ROSTER

Veteran goalie Krisztián Budai is back for his third straight season for Ferencváros, last season played more of a backup role to an import goalie however this season he will be back in the number one spot with Olivér Ágoston getting a decent amount of games as well. With Budai and Ágoston the club looks to be stable between the pipes.

On defense except for the two meter tall Gergely Géczi the unit is made up of small and quick players. Juha Hietamaki is entering his fifth season in the MOL League and is arguably one of the better defenders, helping him out with be fellow defender from Finland Niko Suoraniemi. Edgars Apelis might still bring something to the table but in general the rest of the players look to be relatively average.

Most of the goal scoring is expected to be provided by the imports Joona Manninen and Jimmy Jenson as well as Hungarian Attila Rafaj and the veteran Gábor Kiss is still a point per game player. If Illés Galló can build off of last season and Dubek can have a bounce back season and find his old self the club has the potential to have two solid line. One player that Greg Lindqvist has raved about during training camp and could have a big season is Viktor Kovács who has joined Ferencváros after playing for Dunaújváros last season.

Greg Lindqvist: The plan is to be like the Fradi team from 4-5 years ago, a very tight team that worked hard, finished their checks and was up in the faces of the other team. I hope we will be an aggressive hard working team because we don’t have the best players. We need to work harder than the other teams if we want to make the playoffs. Our goal this season is to make the playoffs, anything else would be a disaster.

Expert Opinion*

This Ferencváors team can draw parallels with the Miskolc team that Greg Lindqvist coached. If the imports that they signed are true leaders on the team and if you add some good Hungarian players and have the goaltending that Miskolc got in Budai, Dubek and Rafaj and they play the way they did then this team can surprise people.

*Recently retired former MOL League player

Arrivals: Ágoston, Fekti (UTE) Apelis (Kurbads, Latvia) Erdélyi, Kovács (Dunaújváros) Hietamaki (Brasov) Pál (Progym Gyergyó, Romania) Suoraniemi (Fife, EIHL) Fliszár, Üveges (Miskolc) Jensen (Briancon, France) Manninen (SalPKo, Mestis)