The Sapporo Heroes are back together again, former Hungarian national team coach Pat Cortina and the rest of the 2008 Division 1/A world champion team will be pulling on the Hungarian jersey again as they will face the Czech Legends.
On Monday a press event was held at which former coach Pat Cortina, current assistant coach Diego Scandella, former starting goalie Levente Szuper along with former NHL player Milan Novy talked about the Tuesday night game between the Sapporo Heros and the Czech Legends.
The event was a light hearted conversation in which the Cortina, Szuper and Scandella reminisced about that that great moment in Hungarian hockey history.
“It's all about us being back together again, and giving the guys a big hug and reminiscing about the success and how I was hard on them.” said Cortina with a laugh, “This will probably be the most relaxed I have ever been behind a Hungarian bench, Diego (Scandella) probably will have video on the Czechs” said Pat with a smile.
Levente Szuper like most of the players he also has moved on to the coaches side of the bench, “
I’m on the ice twice a week with the Vasas goalies, my conditioning is coming from the tennis court not the ice” Levente continued with, “ last couple of weeks I have been on the ice in full gear with the U18 and U20 Vasas squads, I have been breaking in equipment. This will be a celebration for hockey for both countries, hopefully we will have a lot of people cheering for us. It will be a lot of fun but we will be taking it seriously we want to win the game.”
Like Pat and Levente, Diego also talked about the great memories, “I agree with both Pat and Levi, it will be a great way to promote the sport, we will have a great opponent and it will be great to see the guys again.”
Cortina continued on “this was probably the greatest highlight of my coaching career, it was great to see Levi all the positive emotions came back. I was just along for the train ride, these guys were working hard long before I was around, they took me and it was privilege and I was lucky to be a part of it.
Milan Novy was ready to remind everyone that the Czech team is taking this game seriously as well. Our team is a little bit older our guys probably play a couple times a week, our team is made up of guys who played in our top league, the world championships and in the NHL, but now they are practicing twice a week for us, but the Hungarian team is better and younger than us.”
Needless to say this will be an event that everyone is ready to see and it will be a celebration of Hungarian Hockey.
Since the release of the Hungarian roster Artyom Vaszjunyin and Viktor Tokaji, two active players in the MOL League picked up injuries and will not be able to play on Tuesday
