With Head Coach Rich Chernomaz in Italy with the U20 national team, the coaching duo of Gergely Majoross and Diego Scandella was behind the bench. Miklós Rajna was in net with Bence Báálizs as the backup, after sitting out the game against Canada Bálint Magosi, János Vas, Attila Orbán and Csaba Kovács were back in the lineup. Roland Vokla, István Terbócs, Áron Könczei, Tamás Sárpátki and Zoltán Hetényi did not dress.

The game started off faced paced as both teams were trying to find an advantage. Both Poland and Hungary had power plays in the first period but were not able to capitalize on them. It looked like Krisztián Nagy had broken the ice with a goal but István Sofron was called for interference and the goal was waved off. Later in the period Brance Orbán skated in on the right wing and sent shot to the far top corner but missed.

The second period continued as the first period did with both teams trying to score the opening goal. The ice broke just before the midway point of the game when Chris Bodó scored from the bottom of the faceoff circle for his first goal in Hungarian colors to make it 1-0. Twenty seconds later Poland tied it up when Krystian Dziubinski put one past Rajna from just outside of the crease. Later in the period Hungary had a five minute power play where they had a number of scoring chances. Sarauer, Kóger and Sofron combined for nice tic-tac-toe combination but the Polish goalie made a nice save. Csaba Kovács missed an empty net and Kevin Wehrs hit the post, in the end Poland killed the penalty. The period ended with Poland on a two man advantage.

Hungary killed the two man penalty that carried over from the second period. In the early part of of the period Sofron skated onto a Sarauer pass got past the d-man and slipped the pass into the back of the net to put Hungary back up by one goal. Hungary kept on creating coring chances as the period went on with János Vas having shot from just inside of the blue line and János Hári having a chance from the Polish crease. Gergő Nagy would go on to hit the crossbar with less than five minutes left in the game. In the closing minutes of the game Poland pulled their goalie for the extra attacker but it was not enough in the end.

Text: Szabolcs Závodszky

Photo: László Mudra