Hungarian national team and Krefeld Pingvin forward István Sofron took time out of his busy summer to talk to our media partner Nemzeti Sport about what has happened since Krakow and why the upcoming season holds.
In April you went crazy when you found out in Krakow that the three game suspension that you received at the end of your DEL season carries over to the world championships. At least you can start your season with a clean slate?
Except that my teammates are telling me that I still need to serve those last two games.
What?
They say I had to serve the two games because until then my DEL season was not complete or finished. If it had been completed I would have been able to play.
Except that the DEL playoffs did not end until April 22nd, the same day that we defeated Italy 4-1, with a Sodron goal. So know you have to serve those two games twice?
This is true but I am still preparing for the start of the DEL season as if I will not be able to play the first two games. The DEL season doesn't start until September 11th but we will have played a couple of Champions Hockey League games by then.
Its probably great to start the preseason like this.
Basicly everything is the same as it was the past two seasons, however we started a bit earlier last year because of the CHL. We had our first team meeting on July 23, the new players introduced themselves, we also have a new club president who said that we have the fourth smallest budget and we didn't sign big stars like Münich or Berlin did. On the weekend he had the doctors exams and the physical tests.
According to the team website, you had dentists also checking out the players.
Yes they did, we had EKC tests run on us and they listed to our hearts, checkout out our joints everything from top to bottom. We had to do pullups, pushups and squats, later we ran 400m, 60m and ten sets of ten meters. We also did some drills with weights on as well. I was among the better testers, but of course we could barely walk the next day. On Wednesday we had an aqua jog, Friday we boxed and we will be finally hitting the ice on Saturday.
How many players are left from the team that you joined in 2013?
The import players are always coming and going, but from the Germans there are about 10-12 plus the one that have come up from the youth system.
What is the goal of this team?
There were some problems, we lost our main sponsor and the club could not find a similarly sized one to replace the old one. Our last paycheck was delayed as well, the management asked for patience, there were also problems with the lease agreement of the arena but that looks to be settled. Because of our budget no one is really expecting too much from us, because of this we could have a good season. We did sign some players, the club brought in the leading scorer from the Danish league and we have a good goalie. I think we have a nice family environment it's like being with the national team.
Speaking of the national team, has anyone mentioned the promotion?
Of course, Rüdiger Noack the sports director of the club congratulated me at the end of his talk at a team dinner. The club owner mentioned that he watch all the games and said I played really well. Now eve is interested in seeing how we do against them, since we will be playing Germany in St.Petersburg.
Do you prepare differently for the season knowing that an A Pool world championships will be capping off your season?
Yes it matters a lot, all summer we talked about it everyday how it is a great present at the end of the season. We put an extra 20% of effort into everything, we really paid attention to what we ate and how we trained, since our goal is to avoid relegation in St. Peterburg.