Sunday afternoon Hungary took on Ukraine in a much anticipated match that Peter Sevela made his debut for the national team between the pipes. Scratched from 5-0 win against Romania were the two goalies, Miklós Rajna and Bence Bálizs along with Márk Miskolczi, István Bartalis, Adrián Tóth, Richárd Nagy and Bálint Magosi who suffered a concussion against. With Magosi out Balázs Gőz moved from the blue line up top. Gőz said "I have always played on the blue line, at first it was a little strange, I prefer to play back there but if I'm needed in net then I"ll do that for the team."

István Sofron played with the captain's C on his shirt in place of Baratlis. "It's an experience and an honor to be wearing the C on my jersey, clearly it's great pressure, I just remember thinking back to even as a kid I always looked towards the team captain for leadership," Sofron said. After Tamás Sille coached the first two games Rich Chernomaz was back behind the bench, joining Sille, Gary Clarke, and Gergely Majoross.

The first period was relatively slow with both goalie facing a couple of shots but nothing serious.

In the second period things got a bit chippy, ex NHL player Sergei Varlamov scored on a soft shot from between the blue line and the right faceoff circle at 22:05. Varlamov sent a soft one that was redirected by one of his teammates leg as well as Sevela's pads who was being screened and did not see anything from the shot. "I really didn't see anything from that shot," Sevela said after the game.

With about two minutes left in the 2nd Varlamov got past the defense and looked to walk in alone but Arnold Varga skated up his backside to upend him enough to get a weak shot off that was saved by Sevela. A penalty shot was given to the Ukrainian who skated in and tried to be fancy but Sevela stood tall and denied Varlamov from scoring. "I really tried to mess with him by moving around, he tried to go left, I lost my stick and made the blocker save," Sevela remembered.

Both teams were peppering the goals with shots trying to get something going, the Ukrainians were trying to extend their lead and the Hungarians were trying to even things up. In light of being down 1-0 head coach Rich Chernomaz shuffled the lines but in the end it didn't work. "For sure we had some more chances than in the earlier part of the game," said Árpád Mihály. In the end the soft goal was the one that was the game winner in a very good and hard fought game.

Ukraine's head coach Andrei Nazarov said after the game "It was a good game, after playing three games in three nights we were a bit tired, both teams played well, it was a great win against a great team."

"It was a very defensive game, we were mixing it up a bit, I can't really complain," stated Rich Chernomaz. "Offensively we didn't have any shots, you have to shoot to score."

Poland beats Romania, wins tournament

In the second to last game of the three day tournament the well playing Polish team took on the very young Romanian team.

The Romanians were able to hold their ground for the first 9:28 when Marek Strzyzowski took a puck from Adam Baginski and slipped it past Gellért Ruczuj for the lead. The Polish team continued to attack the Romanian goal as Stezyzowski set up Krystian Dziubinski for the goal, and Mikolaj Lopuski also scored in the period. The second period was much like the first as in Romanian couldn't score and Poland had two, Adam Baginski and Rafal Dutka had the two goals. The third period Strzyzowski had his second of the night as the Romanian side was clearly tiring out.

"We were starting to tire during the game as we had played three matches in three games," said Csanád Fodor. "We had some great chances but just couldn't convert". Assistant coach Josh Bonar added "Like through the weekend we played hard and tried to gain experience for the players."

The Polish team as expected said that they had a great tournament and the team has taken giant steps in trying to reach the next level.

Final Standings

Poland 7 points

Ukraine 6 points

Hungary 5 points

Romania 0 points

Text: Szabolcs Závodszky

Photo: László Mudra