It is September 11th 2015, the MOL League season started last night with the EBEL and Fehérvár AV19 starting their season tonight and Gábor Ocskay Jr. would have turned 40 years old. Because of this the weekend read is appearing on Friday.
National team record holder Balázs Kangyal once said about the golden generation, that they had achieved so much, moving up from the C-Pool and everything else that once they retired they know they achieved everything even if they never make it up to the A-Pool, once player who would not have been satisfied would have been Gábor Ocskay, but they did.
He was part of the 2008 national team and had 5 points in 5 games, with three guys on the team scoring more. His “twin” brother Krisztián Palkovics as well as promotion clinching goal scorer Marton Vas the Balázs Ladányi who set him up for the goal. He and only he is the only one of the Sapporo heroes who was never relegated out of the A-Pool. Everyone else from that team would end up playing in the Division 1 again in their careers.
The international hockey family paid their respect to him when the Hungarian team was playing at the world championships in Zürich. He would have been the first line center and would have taken the opening faceoff in the first game.
Before the first game the fans had put up a memorial for him in front of the main entrance with posters, cars and candles for him, the team had his number #19 on their helmets, his number has been retired by the national team and his club Fehérvár.
In the Division 1 pool teams can only assign numbers between 1-32, because of the limited amount of options teams do not exactly go around retiring numbers, but it was no question that no Hungarian national team player at any age would ever wear #19 again. Since 2009 his club has a preseason tournament in his name and the club was renamed with AV19 placed on the end of Fehérvár.
During the 1992-93 season at the age 17 he represented Hungary at three different world championships, U18 and U20 and he capped off the season by making the senior national team as a teenager, at U18 in 6 games he had 5 points at U20 he had 7 in 4 games and an incredible 9 points in 5 games with the senior national team.
He won nine Hungarian titles five Hungarian Cups, an Inter-league gold medal, 3 time Hungarian player of the year, three time forward of the year and a five time winner of the most technical player award. In 2011 he was inducted posthumously into the Hungarian Ice Hockey Hall of Fame. With the senior national team he stepped on the ice 187 and played in 20 world championships. He was the leading scorer of the C-Pool world championships at the age of 22, he won bronze, silver and gold at the Division 1 level.
A role model for people he met and the ones he didn’t.
“I am very lucky to have played with Gábor at such a young age, he taught me that talent is not enough, but you have to work hard as well. I am lucky to have known him” said Zoltán Hetényi who was a member of that Sapporo team. Current Fehérvár head coach Rob Pallin believed that his team needs to play hard in the preseason tournament in honor of Gábor, a person he has never met, this is a way that his life lives on.
Photo: Attila Soós