Hungary opened their 2016 A-Pool World Championship campaign against their neighbors to the North, Slovakia. Rich Chernomaz and his coaching staff had prepared the team and was ready to pull off an upset.
Miklós Rajna had the start in net with Zoltán Hetényi on the bench, scratched for the opening game was goalie, Ádám Vay, defenseman István Mestyán and forward Csanád Erdély. Rich Chernomaz had mixed up the lines compared to what he had been using during the exhibition games.
After killing a penalty in the early minutes of the game Slovakia came back on a counter attack where Rajna made the initial save but Marchenko was on the spot to put in the rebound for the 1-0 lead. Hungary didn’t wait too long to get back into the game as they scored on their first power play as well. István Bartalis brought the puck down behind the goal, centered it where Vilmos put a shot on net that bounced off of Frank Banham to make it 1-1. In the closing minutes Slovakia won a faceoff in the Hungary end, and Tomas Jurco redirected the puck into the back of the net.
Hungary picked up the pace that Slovakia was playing in the first half of the second period. Later in the period Slovakia brought together a nice tic tac toe goal with Sekera finishing the play with the goal to put Slovakia up by two.
The period started off much like the way the second period was played,where Slovakia was the stronger team however Hungary was not much far behind as they were able to put attacks together as well as follow through their checks. As the period went on Slovakia started to pick up penalties unfortunately Hungary was not able to take advantage it as the score stayed in the favor of the opponents. Hungary pulled thier goalie with just over two minutes left, but Slovakia scored to make it 4-1.
Lineup
G.Nagy Bartalis Sofron
Kóger Sarauer Galló
Kovács J.Vas Sebők
Benk K.Nagy Magosi
Banham
Wehrs Dudás
Szirányi Sagert
Stipsicz M.Vas
Garát
Rajna (Hetényi)
World Championships, Russia, Group B (St. Petersburg)
May 7th, 12.15 (11.15): Slovakia–HUNGARY 4-1
May 8th, 12.15 (11.15): HUNGARY–Canada
May 10th, 20.15 (19.15): HUNGARY–France
May 11th, 20.15 (19.15): Finland–HUNGARY
May 13th, 16.15 (15.15): USA–HUNGARY
May 14th, 16.15 (15.15): HUNGARY–Belarus
May 16th, 20.15 (19.15): German
HUNGARIAN ROSTER
Goalies (3): HETÉNYI Zoltán, RAJNA Miklós (Fehérvár AV19), VAY Ádám (Debreceni HK)
Defencemen (8): SZIRÁNYI Bence, WEHRS Kevin (Fehérvár), GARÁT Zsombor, MESTYÁN István, STIPSICZ Bence (MAC), DUDÁS Jesse, SAGERT Kalvin, (DVTK), VAS Márton (Fassa)
Forwards (16): BANHAM Frank, BARTALIS István, BENK András, KOVÁCS Csaba, KÓGER Dániel, NAGY Gergő, SARAUER Andrew (Fehérvár) ERDÉLY Csanád (Sioux Falls), GALLÓ Vilmos (Linköping), MAGOSI Bálint (Briancon), NAGY Krisztián (MAC), SEBŐK Balázs (KalPa), SOFRON István (Klagenfurt), VAS János (Slavia Praha)