Hungary took on Slovakia in their third game at the Women’s D1 U18 World Championships, the day before the game coach Norbert Buzás said “the atmosphere within the team is great, the girls are disciplined and have been putting 100% out on the ice, unfortunately this is a string field of competition, but tomorrow they will going after the result, full throttle”.
In the first period Hungary had to wait until 12:06 for them to take the lead as Hanna Pintér setup Jelena Grkovic for the first goal of the game, minutes later Rebeka Ungár made it 2-0 from an assist from Zora Gottlibet. Slovakia used thier time out at this moment and it looked like it worked as just over a minute later they cut the lead in half on a goal from Andrea Kollova. In the closing minutes of the first period Grkovic scored her second goal of the opening twenty minutes.
Like the first period, in the second period neither team was able to take advantage of the power play opportunities Hungary was able to really open up a lead against Slovakia when Lilien Szelenyi took a pass from Ungár and put it past the keeper to make it 4-1, minutes later Pintér added a goal next to the two assists she already had.
In the early minutes of the third period Lilien Szelenyi got into a tussle with Lenka Curmova for which they were both sent to the penalty box but Szelenyi also had chat with the ref that resulted in 10 minutes as she was called for “abuse of officials”. Hanna Pintér scored her second goal of the game and pretty much put the game out of reach for Slovakia. With less than five minutes left in the game Grkovic completed her hat trick and setting the final score at 7-1.
In the send Hungary outshot Slovakia an amazing 57-16, have six points after three matches and still have a chance of winning the group.
Coaches Corner
“We started the game strong, we skated well and we had the Slovaks constantly under pressure. We still have somethings to work on while playing within the system, but energy level and the emotion was there from start to finish. I do want to highlight as the opponents kind of lost their concentration we were able to stay collected until the end. Two of our players were injured, we don’t know yet if they will be available tomorrow. If we can get a two goal lead on our opponents we know that we can win.” coach Tibor Marton
"Petra Pavuk and Fruzsi Mayer were injured in the game, lucky we have a day off and the medical staff will be able to work on the girls tomorrow and get them to play on Friday. Before teh end of the game but it had already be decided that Hungary would win Slovakia started to get a bit physical, this was a big game for us. The girls fought hard and everyone did what was expected from them now we have some time to rest." coach Norbert Buzás
“It was a great game, 7-1 is a very good score for us, Slovakia tried really hard at the beginning but as we scored more goals on them. I think they got a little tired but they didn't give up, they fought through the whole game, sometimes too hard because in the last period they were just way too aggressive. They took a lot of penalties which was good for us, on our team I think everyone played very well which resulted in the big win. It felt great to win a game like this against our rivals. I'm very proud of the whole team.” team captain Vanda Pál
All info about the world championships can be found here.