Inline: Hungary loses nail biter in OT

Hungary knew a win in regulation would put them in the semi finals, they had a two goal lead in the game but penalties came back to bite them in the end as they fell to Argentina.

After the loss to Australia on Monday night, the Hungarian inline national team was back on the deck facing Agentin a in a must win game if they wanted to advance to the semi finals. Head coach Attila Hoffmann decided to make a switch in net going with Tamás Kiss in favor of Krisztián Budai who had started the first two games.

Hungary took a 1-0 lead when Márton Mach scored in the early minutes of the game after take a pass from Norbert Fekecs. After killing a penalty Hungary looked like the stronger team, it was only a matter of minutes before they would double their lead, Vilmos Gallo setup Zoltán Revák for the close range goal.

The second period opened with an Argentine goal as Tamás Kiss lost the rebound that Rodrigo Irisarri jumped on and deposited the puck in the back of the net to cut the Hungary lead to one. Ákos Kiss put Hungary back up by two when Balázs Bartalis set him up for the goal. Hungary did pick up two penalties late in the period but their penalty kill unit was up for the task. Argentina was able to keep pace with Hungary and managed to score the only goal of the period when Facundo Vadra put the puck past Tamás Kiss. Argentina had a number of scoring chances in the period but were not able to score.

In the final period Argentina did not let up, the game stayed 3-2 despite Hungary committing a number of penalties, with just over five minutes left Tamás Kiss snuffed out a breakaway to keep Hungary up by one. With Argentina on the powerplay they pulled their goalie for the extra attacker and it paid off as Sebastian Bustos scored with 20 seconds left to send the game into overtime.

In overtime Vadra scored his second goal of the game to win in overtime. After the group stage Hungary has 4 points and Argentina has one, with Hungary’s fate in the hands of Australia.

Attila Hoffmann- “We dominated the and controlled the first half of the game, and this was evident on the scoreboard. We were able to get over yesterday's lose, we played disciplined. Unfortunately in the second half we started to play sloppy and we got stuck in our zone, Argentina took over the control of the game which forced us to make mistakes and penalties."

Márton Mach- “At the beginning of the game we stayed within the system and we had a 3-1 lead, we started to think that we had the game and took off the pressure. We took too many penalties which tried us out as we killed the penalties, in overtime we missed a scoring chance and they scored on theirs.”

All information about the tournament can be found here.