As the holiday season approaches it is a great time to go to a MOL League game with friends and family, luckily this upcoming match week is full of exciting match weeks. DVTK and MAC have pulled away from the pack but there is a wide open race with six teams fighting for the remaining four playoff spots.
League leaders Diósgyőr and Ferencváros will both be making a road trip to Transylvania but first both have a game Friday night. DVTK will be visiting Dunaújváros before crossing the border. Fradi will start the weekend hosting cross town rival Újpest. DVTK was missing Jesse Dudás despite his suspension being over, backup goalie Bence Kiss is at the U20 world championships. Ferencváros was also missing a scoring threat and a goalie at the end of last week, the team hopes to have Attila Rafaj and Olivér Ágoston back from injury and illness. The two Romanian teams will be playing in the Romanian Cup starting Thursday, however both teams should have a full roster when they face their MOL League rivals.
After only playing one game last week MAC Budapest will not have an easy week ahead of them as they will be hosting Dunaújváros, a team that has been a challenge to beat, a two game home and home series against Fehérvár AV19, with the Monday night game being a TV game. Dunújváros has had a couple of injuries on the blue line and back up goalie Breton Lindoff is still out. MAC is healthy but they have been reaching deep into their youth system to have a full roster as number of key players are with the U20 national team, among them Gergely Arany, Bence Stipsicz, István Terbócs and Bence Bödök. Fehérvár has picked up a couple points throughout the season against MAC but they also have players missing because of the U20 world championships. Defensive pairing Márk Szaller and Roland Vokla are unavailable and Bence Szabó, Dániel Szabó, Attila Reiter and Devon Krogh were also injured recently. Last week the team did not play a single game, hopefully the time off gave them a chance to get back some injured players.
Debrecen has Újpest right on their tails, win a win Friday night they can put some space between them, however Újpest for the first time also season have all their top scores available, this looks to be a good matchup. The team from Hajdu-Bihar county will close out the week with a home game against Dunaújváros.
League Leaders
Points: 57, Ian McDonald, MAC Budapest
Goals: 29, Jeff Hayes, MAC Budapest
Assists: 45, Ian McDonald, MAC Budapest
Schedule:
Dec. 18th 18:15 DAB-DVTK
Dec. 18th 19:00 FTC-UTE
Dec. 20th 18:00 MAC-DAB
Dec. 20th 18:30 UTE-DHK
Dec. 21st 17:30 Brasov-DVTK
Dec. 21st 18:00 MAC-AV19 (M4)
Dec. 21st 18:00 SC-FTC
Dec. 22nd 17:30 Brasov-FTC
Dec. 22nd 18:00 SC-DVTK
Dec. 22nd 18:30 DHK-DAB
Dec. 23rd 18:30 AV19-MAC