Leading up the world championships we had introduced the support staff of the national team, the equipment managers, the physio team and the team managers, now we move on to the coaching staff. After introducing the goalie coach and the coaching staff we have moved onto the man in charge head coach Rich Chernomaz.
STAFF
Head coach: Rich Chernomaz
Coaches: Gergely Majoross , Diego Scandella, Tamás Sille, Viktor Tokaji
Goalie coach: Gary Clark
Strength and conditioning: Sándor Puskás
GM: Attila Nagy
Team leader: Lajos Imre
Doctor: Ernő Majzik
Physio: Imre Bagonya, Tamás Sashalmi
Equipment managers: József Nagy, Gábor Tornyi
Every organization has their leader at the top, for the Hungarian national team its Rich Chernomaz. After winning the silver medal and promotion to the A-Pool in Krakow, following was said by our media partner Nemzeti Sport about his first days on the job back in 2013.
“In January 2013 Ingolstadt had let their head coach Rich Chernomaz go, the Hungarian Ice Hockey federation had asked if he would not be interested in taking over the national team for the upcoming world championships. Chernomaz has been coaching in the DEL for nearly two decades where he won the championship. We were lucky that it didn’t look like he would be picked up by another team by the end of the season and he was open to the challenge. However when he was introduced to the media Balázs Kangyal said that we have no chance of keeping him in the long run because we do not have the money to pay a quality coach like this. Then during the 2013 world championships the arena was packed with fans and during a conversation after the awards ceremony he gave away a secret that he had signed with a German club as the sports director not as a coach and like everyone since Pat Cortina he had also fallen in love with Hungarian hockey and that he had resigned for the next three seasons.”
This was in 2013
Since then Cherno has coached the U20 national team along with the senior team, which he has gotten to be ranked 16th in the world. As Diego had mentioned earlier in the week, Cherno is the top guy and everything goes according to what he says. He is incharge of a rather large staff that is made up of 13 people with the assistant coaches, physio, team managers, equipment managers and the rest of the support staff. We asked him to mention a couple of words about everyone and what kind of work do they do.
About the equipment managers and physios
(József Nagy, Gábor Tornyi; Imre Bagonya, Tamás Sashalmi)
“The equipment managers and the physiotherapists, Józsi, Gábor, Imi and Eagle do a great job and work hard, they are willing to put the time in to do a good job and they also possess great knowledge for what they do.” says Cherno as if they would be almost friends and family and he only calls them by their nicknames. “Working with people like this makes it easier to concentrate on your own work”.
About the coaches
(Gergely Majoross, Diego Scandella, Tamás Sille, Viktor Tokaji)
“Mogyi, Diego, Tomi and Gary, who is an old fox and Toki who is new to the bunch is our coaching staff. Toki has some great skills and we are lucky that he has decided to get into coaching. The rest of the guys know what their role is and knwo what I expect of them. This next couple of weeks will be lots of fun until we head off to Russia.”
About the team leaders
(Attila Nagy, Lajos Imre)
“There work speaks for itself, for example just look at last week as everything went smoothly with having almost 80 players. There was enough space, food and housing was taken care of as well. Attila and Luigi are a great duo who work well together and work well enough that the players have no chance to complain.”
About the whole staff
“It took some time until we were able to put together the ideal staff, when I first arrived I wanted to give everyone a chance to prove themselves but as we went on there were some people that did not fit into the concept that we had. We made some small changes here and there, but the main point is that everything is working well now.”
Photo: László Mudra
ROSTER
Goalies (5): BÁLIZS Bence (MAC Budapest), KISS Bence (DVTK-Jegesmedvék), HETÉNYI Zoltán, RAJNA Miklós (Fehérvár AV19), VAY Ádám (Debreceni HK)
Defencemen (13): ORBÁN Attila, SZIRÁNYI Bence, VARGA Arnold, WEHRS Kevin (Fehérvár), KISS Dániel (UTE), GARÁT Zsombor, MESTYÁN István, POZSGAI Tamás, STIPSICZ Bence (MAC), DUDÁS Jesse, GŐZ Balázs, SAGERT Kalvin, (DVTK), VAS Márton (Fassa)
Forwards (22): BANHAM Frank, BARTALIS István, BENK András, KOVÁCS Csaba, KÓGER Dániel, NAGY Gergő, REISZ Áron, SARAUER Andrew, SÁRPÁTKI Tamás, SIKORCIN Ladislav (Fehérvár), CSÁNYI Karol (UTE), ERDÉLY Csanád (Sioux Falls), SOMOGYI Balázs (DVTK), GALLÓ Vilmos (Linköping), HÁRI János (Leksand), KÖNCZEI Áron (Debrecen), MAGOSI Bálint (Briancon), NAGY Krisztián, TERBÓCS István (MAC), SEBŐK Balázs (KalPa), SOFRON István (Klagenfurt), VAS János (Slavia Praha)
SPRING SCHEDULE
Exhibition games
April 15th, Friday, 18.00 (Budapest): v Austria
April 16th, Saturday, 16.30 (Vienna): @Austria
April 20th Wednesday, 19.00 (Budapest): v Slovenia
April 29th, Friday, 19.00 (Budapest): v Kazakhstan
April 30th, Saturday, 19.00 (Budapest): v Russia B
World Championships, Russia
Group B (St. Petersburg)
May 7th, Saturday, 12.15 (11.15): v Slovakia
May 8th, Sunday, 12.15 (11.15): v Canada
May 10th, Tuesday, 20.15 (19.15): v France
May 11th, Wednesday, 20.15 (19.15): v Finland
May 13th, Friday, 16.15 (15.15): v USA
May 14th, Saturday, 16.15 (15.15): v Belarus
May 16th, Monday, 20.15 (19.15): v Germany
(CET)