Olympic qualification tournament in Budapest: Hungary’s hockey team defeats Lithuania in first win

Hungary was back on home ice for the first time since winning promotion to the A-Pool, and they did not disappoint the fans during the opening Olympic Qualifying Tournament game, icehockey.hu reports.

Head coach Rich Chernomaz game Miklós Rajna the start in net for the opening game of the Olympic Qualifying tournament, and Vilmos Galló and Bence Stipsicz were making their senior national team debuts.

Lithuania kept the game close at the beginning of the game as Mantas Armins looked good in net, however at the 15 minute mark of the game Vilmos Galló scored his first goal in his first senior national team game when he took a beautiful tape tape pass from Krisztián Nagy and fired it past Armins.

According to icehockey.hu, in the first part of the second period things got heated as Dániel Kóger and István Bartalis were both sent to the penalty box and Lithuania had a 5 on 3 for just under a minute. Hungary was able to kill both penalty kills and in the 28th minute János Hári put Hungary up by two when he banged in a rebound off of an István Bartalis shot.

Lithuania still did not want to go away as they played great in front of their own net and cleared out the garbage. In the opening minutes of the second period Hungary was on the power play when Frank ‘the Tank’ Banham fired a rocket past Armins who had no chance of saving it.

Hungary started to pull away as minutes later Dániel Kiss skated in and used a Lithuanian D-man to screen the goalie and put one in the back of the net.

The Hungarian defense held on and Rajna went the distance for the 4-0 shutout win.

Line up

Kóger, Sarauer, Sofron
Kovács, G.Nagy, J.Vas
Banham, Hári, Bartalis
Benk, K.Nagy, Vincze./Galló

M.Vas, Pozsgai
Szirányi, Mestyán
Kiss, Stipsicz
Gőz

Rajna (Hetényi)

Coaches’ Corner

Rich Chernomaz: “I thought it was a tough game, i thought their goalie played very well, they stuck with the structure. I think the first game is always a hard one to win in a tournament.”

Bernd Haake: “This is a historical game for Lithuania as they have never played against an A-Pool team. There were a lot of shots on net, we have two scoring chances but we didn’t capitalize on it. Over all the boys worked hard and played disciplined in the second two periods.”

View from the ice

István Bartalis: “I felt pretty well, it was great to be playing in front of a crowd like this, we had some scoring chances but since the third forward was always being rotated in we didn’t get in a groove as we had planned.”

Dániel Kiss: “The opponent wasn’t as hard, but we had the shutout so it was great, with the goal I closed my eyes and just shot and saw what would happen.”

THE HUNGARIAN SQUAD

Goalies (2): HETÉNYI Zoltán, RAJNA Miklós (Fehérvár AV19)

Defencemen (7): SZIRÁNYI Bence (Fehérvár AV19) KISS Dániel (Újpest), MESTYÁN István, POZSGAI Tamás STIPSICZ Bence (MAC), GŐZ Balázs (DVTK) VAS Márton (Fassa, Seria A)

Forwards (13): BANHAM Frank, BARTALIS István, BENK András, KOVÁCS Csaba, KÓGER Dániel, NAGY Gergő, SARAUER Andrew, VINCZE Péter (Fehérvár AV19), NAGY Krisztián (MAC), SOFRON István (Klagenfürt, EBEL) HÁRI János (Leksand, Eliteserien), GALLÓ Vilmos (Linköpings SHL), VAS János (Slavia Praha, CZE2)

Head coach: Rich Chernomaz

SCHEDULE

2016. February 11th
Poland–Estonia 6-2
Hungary–Lithuania 4-0

2016. February 12th
14.30: Poland–Lithuania
19.30: Hungary–Estonia

2016. February 14th
14.30: Estonia–Lithuania
18.00: Hungary–Poland

Photo: MTI

Source: icehockey.hu