The Italian national team has always been strong team who has throughout their history drawn players from Northern Italy. In the past decade or so they have been trying to stick in the A Pool by nationalizing Canadian and Americans to make the team stronger. The scale has tipped so much to the other side that there has been a drop off in hockey interest in Italy, because of this Italian federation has decided to come to Budapest with a strictly Italian only roster.
The Italian federation has brought in former USA head coach Lou Vairo as a technical technical advisor and taking control behind the bench is Ivano Zanatta.
Roster Analysis
Despite perceivably having a weaker roster than what people are used to this is still a very strong team. The goaltending position is a bit of a mixed bag as they have a 33 yearold veteran in Mark Demetz who has played his entire career in Italy but has yet to play in the world championships, a young goalie Philipp Kosta and the most experience at the international level Alex Caffi who looks to be the number one keeper for years to come.
On defence Armin Hoffer and the 21 year old Alex Trivellato are the only two players back from the world championship team. Getting back into the squad is Christian Willeit and Hannes Oberdörfer after a couple of years looking in from the outside. None of the blue liners really have any experience outside of Italy.
Sticking with the only Italians policy the forward lines will only have one line worth of players that played in Minsk at last years world championships. Despite being only 25 years old Anton Bernard could be considered the veteran forward with the most international experience. Bernard is not a scoring forward but has grit, Diego Koster is also the same type of player. Diego Iori who has played in the world championships in the past is a player that the coaching staff will be relying on to generate some goals. He has generally been a point per game forward in Fassa. Two young guys to watch out for is Raphael Andergassen and Michele Marchetti, who have the potential to be the scoring threats in the rebuilt Italian national team.
Expert Opinions
“The Italian team is the dark hours, with a new staff and a completely new squad we don’t really know what to expect but we will not be looking at the games from the past for sure,” Hungarian assistant coach Gergely Majoross
“We would like to break our bad luck against the Italians, we would like to gain some confidence for the future and hope the new guys in the squad can pick this up as well, and prove that they belong here,” Defencman Viktor Tokaji
“We will have to respond and regroup and play hard, all we are asking from the guys is to play hard and give what they can, we know we are playing the best team here and it is part of the building process, we know what kind of work Hungary has done in the past couple of years,” Italian coach Ivano Zantta