All four teams are going through periods of change. This will give the coaching staffs of all four nations a chance of trying out new players and new systems, to see what can work not only for the upcoming world championships but for down the road as well.

SCOUTING REPORTS

Korea has caused some problems for the Hungarians in the past as they lost in a shootout at the 2013 World Championships. Korea had established a particular style of play but has slowly been adding nationalized players, first it was Brock Radunske and last year they had Michael Swift and Bryan Young. Korea will be coming to Budapest with a new coaching duo of Jim Paek and Richard Park and a handful of Canadians on the roster.

Poland is a team that in the past couple of season have had two Russians at the helm. GM Vyacheslav Bykov and head coach Igor Zakharkin have pulled Poland back up to respectability and will be hosting the 2015 Division 1A World Championship next April, they are not a team to take lightly.

The Italians are a bit of a wild card, they have a new coach in Lou Vairo. In the past the Italian team had started to look more and more like an All-Star team of North Americans playing in Europe. This year, or at least right now the Italian federation is emphasizing Italians from Italy. They will still have a strong team but Vairo has been known to play in a European style.

“I think that all four teams at this tournament will be using it to test new ideas, implementing new strategies and trying to adjust to the new rules,” Hungarian captain, Viktor Tokaji about the tournament. “The changing of the blue line might not be a major change but it is a big difference for us both from both the defensive and the offensive aspect.”

CHANGES IN MANY WAYS

HC Rich Chernomaz and his coaching staff have added a new dimension to the team taking into consideration what happened in Korea at last year’s world championships and the changes in the neutral zone. After emphasizing size, Chernomaz has turned to speed as the next step in the youth movement in the second year of the three year plan. Two things you need to be successful at the next level (the A pool) is speed and size.

With the changes to the neutral zone having speed is more important than before, because of this the coaching staff decided to bring in 60 players for the training camp. There were no changes to the coaching staff from last season, Chernomaz has brought back assistants, Gergely Majoross, Tamás Sille, Diego Scandella and goalie coach Gary Clark.

The goalie position has become a strong point year in and year out, Zoltán Hetényi has yet to play this season because of his brain fever and its complications and Peter Sevela, who is also sick, had to miss the tournament. In their absence Bence Bálizs, Miklós Rajna and Dávid Duschek will trying to replace them. Bálizs and Rajna were not surprises on the roster, but according to the coaching staff Duschek was the best going in the training camp.

The last couple of years with players retiring Chernomaz has been trying to find defencemen with size. In his pursuit he turned to two forwards, Márton Vas and Tamás Gröschl. Gröschl is not on the team because a birth of a child, veteran Viktor Tokaji is back for possibly his last season with the national team. Also back from last years world championship roster is Adrián Hüffner, Attila Orbán, Tamás Pozsgai, Bence Szirányi, as well as Balázs Gőz who has world championship experience but missed out on a roster spot this past spring. Missing from the team as well is Arnold Varga who is still recovering from a broken collarbone, the result of a motorcycle accident.

The last three defencemen are Attila Reiter, Nathan Martine and István Mestyán. Reiter has played on the national team before but is young defenceman that has a bright future ahead of him. Martine and Mestyán are two DAB.Docler defenseman who will be making their national team debuts. According to Chernomaz Mestyán was not someone they had on their radar but impressed them with his speed to make the final roster. Nathan Martine is a Canadian who is ¾ Hungarian and is in the process of getting his citizenship. Chernomaz liked what Martine showed, clearly this roster spot was used for the future.

SPEED IS THE MAGIC WORD

Just like on the blue line there were similar changes to the forward unit as speed is being the key word this November. There are a number of forwards missing from last years world championship team, István Bartalis and Dániel Koger have not played in weeks for their club team Fehérvár AV19 because of broken wrists and were not healthy for the tournament. Árpád MIhály missed the training camp because of club commitments at Brasov, with Zsolt Azari getting cut because at this time he didn't fit into what the coaching staff is looking for. The core group of veteran forwards of András Benk, János Hári, Csaba Kovács, Bálint Magosi, Ladislav Sikorcin, István Sofron and János Vas are all back as well as young up and comers Krisztián Nagy and Balázs Sebők.

With Rich Chernomaz there are always surprises and he did not disappoint, Tyler Metcalfe who is eligible to play in the upcoming world championships is on the team along with Tamás Sárpátki a 20 year old forward from Fehérvár that everyone has been talking about because of his size, speed and hands. The forwards that surprised a number of people are four MOL League forwards two each from Ferencváros and Újpest. Rich Chernomaz said that he liked the speed of and scoring touch of Attila Rafaj who was the leading scorer in the training camp, the Ferencváros forward Vladimir Dubek made the team not because of his youth (33 years old) but because of his scoring skills which are very important. The two Újpest players are Karol Csányi, a Slovak born speedy forward who is not eligible to play in at the world championships but Chernomaz likes his upside, and Martin Turbucz who has good size and is surprisingly agile.

If everything goes well there is a chance that that a a couple of U20 players might get called up to the senior team to face the Italians.

ROSTER

Goalies (3): Bálizs Bence, Duschek Dávid (Miskolci Jegesmedvék), Rajna Miklós (Fehérvár AV19)

Defencemen (10): Gőz Balázs (Miskolci Jegesmedvék), Hüffner Adrián, Nathan Martine, Mestyán István, Pozsgai Tamás (Dab.Docler), Orbán Attila, Reiter Attila, Szirányi Bence, Tokaji Viktor (Fehérvár AV19), Vas Márton (Löwen Frankfurt, GER)

Forwards (15): Benk András, Kovács Csaba, Magosi Bálint, Sárpátki Tamás, Sikorcin Ladislav (Fehérvár AV19), Karol Csányi, Turbucz Martin (Újpest), Dubek Vladimir, Rafaj Attila (Ferencváros Bp. ESMTK), Hári János (MODO, SWE), Tyler Metcalfe, Nagy Krisztián (Miskolci Jegesmedvék), Sebők Balázs (Hokki, FIN), Sofron István (Krefeld Pinguine, GER), Vas János (Slavia Praha, CZE)

SCHEDULE

November 7.
15.30: Poland–Italy
19.00: Hungary–Korea (Tv: Sport 1)

November 8.
14.30: Italy–Korea
18.00: Hungary–Poland (Tv: Sport M)

November 9.
14.30: Korea–Poland
18.00: Hungary–Italy (Tv: Sport M)

Text: Szabolcs Závodszky

Photo: László Mudra