Every year there is news about new teams joining the MOL League, for the first time teams from Poland have been brought into the picture.
Two years ago the league voted against Vasas and Debreceni HK joining the league, a year later DHK made another run at the idea and were voted in. Debrecen has made the playoffs in their first season meanwhile Vasas has decided to wait another year before applying again. MAC Budapest would like to join in the near future as well as Alba Volán entering a farm team. Romanian teams such as Galati are in the mix every season as well as Serbian and Slovak second division teams this is the first time that clubs from Poland have been brought up.
During last November’s 4 Nations Tournament the idea was brought up about Polish teams playing in the MOL League, soon after Zoltán Kovács from the Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation and Károly Radani, MOL League vice president went to Poland for a visit.
Radnai brought up a number of points why it would be a great idea for the league to expand north, from a strategic standpoint it would be great to at least consider the idea. Two concepts for expansion were brought up, one would be that individual teams would apply for entry to the league just as Debrecen did as the newest expansion team did. KH Sanok for example has show interest among other teams as well. The MOL League is looking at this as a partnership not as competitions, the league in no way is trying to diminish or weaken Polish hockey. The second concept that was brought up is more along these lines of a partnership with the entire Polish first division joining which is currently made up of 10 teams, this would mean that the league could be split into a Northern and a Southern division. There could be just Polish teams in the Northern and the current MOL League in the southern or maybe even have one or two teams make the jump into the southern division. The schedule could be a home and home against teams in the other division and each team would play four times against teams in their own division to have a schedule somewhere between 40 and 50 games. Regardless of how things end up it is great for both leagues as the teams would be playing against more teams and raising the level of competition.
By looking at the map all the Polish teams are located in the southern part of the country, for most of the Hungarian teams these teams are closer than Csíkszereda or Brasov. In the long run this could also make it easier for Slovak teams to join in the future. Both side are looking at this plan with optimism.
There have been a number of former MOL League players in the league as Mike Danton and Jordan Knox played for Sanok this season.
Photo: László Mudra