The Hungarian national team won its first game on the Olympic pre-qualification tournament with a confident, pleasing game. In 40 minutes they scored five goals while conceding only one.
András Benk scored already in the 3. minute, coming from behind the goal. Afterwards only two Hungarian players made an impact on the game, but they did it twice.
János Hári and Márton Vas hit a double, Vas’s goal from knee was simply magnificent. In the goalless third period the team took it a bit easy, but they sure did not spare energy for the game tomorrow against Croatia. We have to mention that one of the Hungarian goals was not valid because of goal crease interference.
The only Lithuanian goal happened in the second period when they had a man advantage. Kulesius managed to outmanouver Bálizs, so the Hungarian goalie could not make the shutout.
It was an easy victory for the Hungarians in front of almost 5000 spectators. The organizers expect sold out at the weekend. We just hope that the traditional „teddythrowing” will take place after a glorious win against Croatia on Saturday.
Bernd Hakke, coach: Lithuania
I am not unhappy with one-five, although I thought before hand, that we could get more goals. But there is an old hockey saying:”you cannot win games from the penalty box”, they scored three power play goals against us, so that’s where it really went wrong. Most of the Hungarian players have been on the ice since August, whereas our players only started skating in early October and our league only had three rounds, so I can honestly say I am not unhappy, in spite of the score line. We wanted to win one period and we managed to take one for a draw, that’s what we have to take into our next game, we do not want to olse all of our games!
Diego Scandella, coach: Hungary
I liked the effort of the team, it was sixty good minutes of hockey. We got ourselves in a whole after taking the lead, but the boys kept on working shift after shift and Lithuania ran out of gas. The first period of every tournament is very important, since you want to get off to a good start. We had a good start, then we got into some trouble with the penalties, but then we scored a goal and got out of trouble and the guys took off from there, which was good to see. We will not underestimate anybody and we will take every game very seriously.