Icehockey.hu sat down with Zoltán Kovács of teh Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation who had been at the IIHF congress in Moscow recently, Mr.Kovács gave an update on what is going on in hockey during teh current offseason.
“As usual the IIHF held their two day congress during the World Championships, this time in Moscow. The first day revolved around the elections of the board members of the IIHF, Rene Fasle was elected for another four year term with our own Dr. Zsuzsanna Kolbenheyer, Vice President of the Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation, will be a part of the board for another four years as well.
The second day the IIHF voted on where each of the World Championships for the upcoming season would be held. In a surprise result Austria which had applied with Innsbruck as the host city lost out to the Ukrainian bid to host the Senior Division 1/A World Championships on a vote of 14-13, we were not the only ones that were surprised by this. The women's World Championships will most likely be held in the new arena in Graz, official Austria won the right to host the tournament however it was not announced in which city it will be held. The men's U20 Division 1/B had a number of host applicants, as the day went a number of applicants withdrew their bid and in the end Budapest won over one other applicant, the Tüskecsarnok will be the World Championship venue. We had it easier with the Women’s U18 Division 1 as we were the only applicants. Interestingly the Men’s U18 will be decided in September since no one has stepped forward to host the tournament. The Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament was originally supposed to be held in November, however it was pushed back to December and it will be held in Norway.
The Euro Ice Hockey Challenge also held a meeting to plan out the upcoming season, Korea has been trying to play as many European teams as they are preparing for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Korea will be playing in Hungary earlier in the season, and they have invited Hungary along with Denmark and Japan for an EIHC tournament in February for when they will be testing the Olympic facilities.
Next year the Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation will be 90 years old, and because of this anniversary the Hungarian national team will be hosting a game on March 30th in the Budapest Sports Arena against an A-Pool opponents.”
During the congress the IIHF voted on how overtime period will be conducted in the end during all overtime IIHF games there will be a five minute session that will be contested 3 on 3, with the first one to score winning. If the score remains tied after five minutes the game will go to a shootout where each team will have three shooters and if needed a sudden death shootout with follow. At the elite world championships during the knockout stage overtime will be ten minutes of four on four hockey, followed by five shooters for the shootout. In the gold medal game it will be twenty minutes of five on five with five shooters if needed as well.
The Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation representatives sat down with the representatives of the Romanian Ice Hockey Federation in hopes of coming up with a plan for the future of the MOL League. In the end the two sides were not able to sit down and discuss anything as the RIHF president stated that he will have a better understanding of everything after the June 9th general assembly that they will have as well as the June 5th public elections which could impact the budget of some of the Romanian teams.
On Monday May 30th at 15:00 the Hungarian Ice Hockey federation will be voting on a number of leadership positions. It is assumed that Csaba Kovács, president of the HIHF will not be reelected as Győrgy Such is the only name on the nomination list. The MOL League representatives on the HIHF board will also be replaced after their one year term expires, taking their place will be Gábor Pap (FTC), Barna Zsigmond (UTE), András Cser-Palkovics (Fehérvár AV19), who were nominated by the League, pending approval of the HIHF. It is expected that new board members will also be nominated.