The Hungarian national team held their only practice of the day on Thursday morning. The team will face Kazakhstan and the Russian ‘B’ on the closing weekend of the Hockey marathon.
As we have come accustomed to this, this past week the team hit the ice for a 100 minute ice session as 10.00 in the Tüskecsarnok, the goalies worked out the first half hour with everyone joining after.
János Hári was still around to watch the practice with his wrist in an orange colored cast, the silver lining to this is that Csanád Erdély was able to use his equipment had still not arrived.
Rich Chernomaz has named his squad for Friday’s game with two goalies, eight defencemen and thirteen forwards to be dressed, the two goalies will be splitting the ice time.
Friday’s squad
Goalies (2): Bálizs, Rajna
Defenseman (8): Dudás, Garát, Mestyán, Sagert, Stipsicz, Szirányi,M.Vas Wehrs
Forwards (13): Banham, Bartalis, Benk, Erdély, Galló, Kóger, Könczei, G.Nagy, K.Nagy, Sarauer, Sebők, Sofron, Terbócs
Rich Chernomaz: The guys have been working hard, we have made some mistakes but that was expected, things have been coming along fine, we have two big tests in front of us this weekend. Kazakhstan is a tough team where their players play in the KHL, they have four naturalized players as well so that will be a tough game. We need to look at what type of players we have and what pieces we need for the puzzle, we can’t have the exact same 22 players on the team, we need speed, we need toughness and we need youth.
István Bartalis: I think I am in good shape and we will see how the rest will go. The speed of the game will be much faster this weekend and we need to make sure that we play within the system that the coaching staff has brought up for us and if we do this we will not have any problems.
Csanád Erdély: I have less time to prove that I belong compared to everyone else, I have two games to show what I can do and fight for a spot on the roster. I am in game form as I was still playing on Saturday, I hope that this can be an advantage for me.
Csaba Kovács: Everyone is motivated and the goal that we have in front of us speaks for itself. Everyone is working hard to make the final world championship roster.There is a great atmosphere within the team and we have taken back on the physicality of the practices and have been working more on tactics. We are expecting to play two very hard practices but we know that this will help us in the preparation for the tournament for us.