Ice hockey in Slovakia

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Flag of Slovakia.svg Ice hockey in Slovakia
Olympia 2010
Association: Slovenský zväz Ľadového hokeja
Founded: 1993
IIHF member since: 2nd February 1993
First international match:
Slovakia 1939Slovakia Slovakia 0:12 Bohemia & Moravia February 1, 1940 in Garmisch-PartenkirchenProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1939Bohemia and Moravia 
Medal winners men:
WM: 1 × gold, 2 × silver, 1 × bronze
Olympia: no
Medal winners women:
WM: no
Olympia: no

Ice hockey isone of the most popular sportsin Slovakia alongside football . More than 8,000 players areregistered withthe Slovak Ice Hockey Federation out of a population of around 5.5 million people. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Slovakia has been a full member of the International Ice Hockey Federation IIHF again and has been participating in world championships since 1994.

history

The beginnings

The first ice hockey club in what is now Slovakia was founded in 1922 with the ČsŠK Košice by the Czechs Fleischmann, Rezac and Broz. While the so-called Canadian ice hockey was already being played in the Czech Republic, the Slovaks played more bandy until the late 1920s .

Badge of the European Championship 1925

Shortly thereafter, other clubs were founded in Bratislava , Banská Bystrica and Žilina . In 1925 the European Championships were held in the High Tatras , which increased interest in ice hockey in the region. In the following three years further ice hockey clubs were established in Prešov , Nitra , Trnava and the High Tatras itself. In 1929 the first Slovak ice hockey tournament, the Tatranský pohár (Tatra Cup), was founded. This is the second oldest cup tournament in European ice hockey.

→ see main article Tatranský pohár

On January 31, 1929, the Slovak Association for Canadian Ice Hockey ( Slovak Slovenská župa kanadského hockeja ) was founded. The founding members were the Bratislava Ski Club , ŠK Slávia Banská Bystrica , ŠK Vysoké Tatry , ČsŠK Košice and ŠK Žilina . From 1930 this association, which belonged to the Czechoslovak Ice Hockey Federation, organized an independent Slovak championship . 1936 of the managed HC Tatry promotion to the top division of Czechoslovakia, the first league . The university club VŠ Bratislava followed the HC Tatry one year later in this league.

Ladislav Troják was the first Slovak in the national team

Ladislav Troják from ČsŠK Košice was the first Slovak national player to be nominated for the Czechoslovak national team . In 1934 he moved to LTC Prague , one of the most successful teams in the country before the Second World War. Troják was also the first Slovak national player to take part in an Olympic tournament . At the Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936 , the team took fourth place.

In the time of the first Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1945, the national Slovak ice hockey association was re-established, which set up an independent national team. By the end of the war, they played nine international matches, with three wins, one draw and five defeats. The sport was particularly popular in the regions of Slovakia where the lakes froze over in winter and so many people could play ice hockey in their free time. That was in Banská Bystrica , where most of the players in the small republic came from. In the 1940s there were 34 ice hockey clubs in Slovakia, compared to over 1,000 in what is now the Czech Republic .

Ice hockey in the ČSSR

After the war, the Slovak Ice Hockey Association merged with the Czech Association again. The ŠK Bratislava , VŠ Bratislava , ŠK Banská Bystrica and the HC Vysoké Tatry were included in the re-established national championship of the ČSSR. In 1947 the first world championship after the war took place in Prague and the hosts won the gold medal. Also there was the Slovak Ladislav Troják, who died five years later together with five teammates in an airplane accident over the English Channel.

Gold medal of the 1947 World Cup

Many Slovak clubs participated in the championship of the ČSSR in the 1950s. These teams included the VŠ Bratislava, ŠK Banská Bystrica, ŠK Žilina and the ŠKP Poprad. But only today's HC Slovan Bratislava managed to establish itself permanently in the top division. Bratislava was in 1959 the venue for a World Cup group. The host Czechoslovaks won 9-0 against Switzerland, 13-1 against Poland and lost 7-2 against eventual world champions Canada. At the end of the tournament, the ČSSR won the bronze medal.

In 1963 the league system of Czechoslovakia was reformed, with all leagues below the 1st division being divided between the two states. The second-class 1st NHL was divided into the 1st ČNHL ( Czech Česká národní hokejová liga ) and the 1st SNHL ( Slovak Slovenská národná hokejová liga ). By 1993, three different Slovak clubs were able to become Czechoslovak champions four times: Slovan Bratislava (1979), VSZ Košice (1986, 1988) and Dukla Trenčín (1992).

Until the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, the joint national team won a total of four World Cup titles - 1972, 1976, 1977 and 1985. It was one of the few teams that could compete with the dominant Soviet national team . Slovak players who contributed to these successes include Vladimír Dzurilla , Rudolf Tajcnár and Julius Haas . At the Olympic Winter Games in the 1960s, Czechoslovakia won other medals, with Jozef Golonka being part of the national squad alongside Dzurilla . As early as 1948 in St. Moritz , the Slovak Ladislav Trojak had won the Olympic silver medal with the national team.

Spin-off and establishment

Slovakia (in white) against Austria, Olympia 2002

On January 1, 1993, the Czechoslovak Federation dissolved and the two sovereign states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia emerged. About the turn of the year 1992/93, the Czechoslovak junior national team took part in the U20 World Cup, played the tournament as a team of the Czech and Slovak Republics and finished third.

The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) decided that the Czech Republic should be treated as the sporting legal successor to the ČSFR . This was justified by the fact that the national team until 1992 belonged to a smaller number of Slovak players. The Czechs had ensured through a quota system that there were always more Czechs than Slovaks in the national team of the CSSR. Therefore, Slovakia had to relegate to the third division of the World Cup, the so-called C group. In 1994 , at the first World Cup after the division, the national team made it to Division I. In the following year , it won the Division I tournament and was promoted to the top division. At the first A-World Championship a year later , the Slovak national team finished tenth.

In 1994 Slovakia also made its debut at the Winter Olympics in Albertville and finished sixth. In the following two Olympic ice hockey tournaments , in 1998 and 2002 , the Slovak team was less successful and finished the tournaments in the back of the table.

At the World Cup in Sweden in 2000 , the Slovak national team placed in the medal ranks for the first time when it was defeated by the Czech selection in the final and won the silver medal. At the 2002 World Cup , Slovakia won their only World Cup title to date when Peter Bondra scored the decisive goal against the Russian national team in the final. A year later, at the 2003 World Championship in Saint Petersburg , the national team won the bronze medal. The most important players of this golden generation were Peter Bondra, Marián Gáborík , Jozef Stümpel , Žigmund Pálffy , Marián Hossa , Pavol Demitra , Richard Zedník and Michal Handzuš . Since then Slovakia has not been able to build on these successes at world championships, as it suffers from the migration of its best players to the NHL like the representatives of other smaller countries. Their game system is described as follows: “The Slovaks play a mixture of Canadian power and speed hockey, paired with a filigree technical stick handling typical of former Eastern Bloc countries. They can hardly be played 1 to 1 and even in attacks with an overwhelming power of one or two players, the end of the line is usually the defender or the goalkeeper. "

The women's national team against France , friendly match in August 2008

At the 2006 Winter Olympics , the Slovaks ranked fifth and four years later, at the 2010 Winter Olympics , they reached the semi-finals and established so that once again the success of the early 2000s on.

The Slovak junior national teams also had their first successes in the late 1990s. In 1999, the country's U20 representation won the bronze medal at the Junior World Championships. Since 2007, the U20 team has been participating in the Extraliga under the name of HK Orange 20 in order to give the young players sufficient match practice and allow them to grow closer together. Two years later, this measure began to pay off when the U20 selection finished fourth at the 2009 Junior World Championships .

The women's national team was founded in 1995 and took part in European championships from 1995 . From 1999 , the national team also competed in the women's world championships and, after long membership in the lower divisions, rose from Division I to the top division of the IIHF tournament in 2009 . During the qualifying tournament for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games , the Slovaks defeated the Bulgarian national ice hockey team 82-0 - this is the highest victory ever achieved in an official IIHF women's competition. In the 2010 Olympic ice hockey tournament, they finished eighth in the women's national team's first participation in such a tournament.

League system

The Slovnaft Extraliga is the top division in Slovak professional ice hockey. The league was created in 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia from the division of the highest Czechoslovak league, the first division , into a Czech and a Slovak professional class. From the 1993/94 season to 1997/98 the league was officially named Extraliga , and since 1998 various sponsor names have been included in the title, so the division was called West Extraliga until 2001 , other names were Boss Extraliga , ST Extraliga and T-Com Extraliga .

Dukla Trenčín against HK 36 Skalica , season 2008/09

The Slovak Extraliga is considered to be the financially weakest among Europe's top 7 leagues . In the Champions Hockey League in 2008 she was first classified as number five because of her successes in the European Cup and thus received a permanent starting place. The clubs' budgets and salaries roughly correspond to the Swiss National League B , with the differences between the top teams such as HC Slovan Bratislava and the teams at the back being large. The best talents leave the country early, especially for the neighboring Czech Republic or the Canadian junior leagues of the Canadian Hockey League . Due to the limited financial resources, the Slovak extra league is also the European elite league with the fewest foreign players. Most of the foreign players in the Extraliga are also Czech players over 30 who end their careers there.

Below the Extraliga there is a second division, the 1st hokejová liga SR , which is held in two seasons with seven participants each. The champions of the 1st league achieve the athletic qualification for the extra league, but can only be accepted into this through a license. Below the 1st league is the third division in Slovakia with 2. hokejová liga SR , which is played in three seasons and with a total of 15 participating clubs. While there were still relegation games between the second and third division in the 1990s, the champion of the third division now (2011) is promoted directly to the second division.

successes

at world championships
at Winter Olympics
Winning the IIHF Continental Cup
IIHF Super Cup

Known players

Miroslav Šatan in the jersey of the Boston Bruins
Peter Pucher in the jersey of the HKm Zvolen

World champion squad 2002

The following players won the gold medal at the 2002 World Cup:

World Cup logo

Goalkeepers: Ján Lašák , Miroslav Šimonovič , Rastislav Staňa

Defenders: Jerguš Bača , Ladislav Čierny , Radoslav Hecl , Richard Lintner , Dušan Milo , Peter Smrek , Martin Štrbák , Ľubomír Višňovský

Attackers: ľuboš bartečko , Peter Bondra , Michal Handzuš , Miroslav Hlinka , Ladislav Nagy , Vladimír Országh , Žigmund Pálffy , Rastislav Pavlikovský , Róbert Petrovický , Peter Pucher , Miroslav Šatan , Radovan Somík , Jozef Stümpel , Róbert Tomík , Marek Uram

Coaching staff: Ján Filc (head coach) , Ernest Bokroš , Vladimír Šťastný (both assistant coaches)

Slovaks in the NHL

Michal Handzuš in the Los Angeles Kings jersey

By July 2017, a total of 76 field players and four goalkeepers with Slovak nationality had played at least one game in the National Hockey League . The players on the list below have scored the most scorer points in the NHL. The list is headed by Stan Mikita , who left Czechoslovakia at the age of eight and learned to play ice hockey in Canada . Therefore he is not counted as a Slovak in some statistics. Peter Šťastný and his brother Anton left the Czechoslovak team after the 1980 Winter Olympics. Both then played for the Nordiques de Québec for many years , with Peter setting standards with 1239 points from 977 games. Peter Bondra left Czechoslovakia in 1990 and played for four different teams in the NHL, with 892 points scorer in a total of 1081 games.

Four goalkeepers from Slovakia have so far played in the NHL as Slovakia had problems training above-average goalkeepers since the early 1990s. This also affected the Slovak national team, whose weakest position was often the goalkeeper. Since 2005 and 2006 respectively, two Slovak goalkeepers, Peter Budaj and Jaroslav Halák, have prevailed in the NHL and are therefore first choice as national goalkeepers. With Ján Lašák and Rastislav Staňa , two more goalkeepers tried to gain a foothold in the NHL in the 2000s, but now play in the SM-liiga and KHL . Since the founding of the KHL, there has been a wave of Slovak players from the NHL and other European leagues who have migrated to this new transcontinental Russian ice hockey championship.

Active NHL players are shown in bold .

Outfield player

Surname Teams Playing times Games Gates Assists Points
1 Stan Mikita Blackhawks 1958-1980 1394 541 926 1467
2 Peter Šťastný Nordiques , devils , blues 1980-1995 977 450 789 1239
3 Peter Bondra Capitals , Senators , Thrashers , Blackhawks 1990-2007 1081 503 389 892
4th Marián Hossa Senators , Thrashers , Penguins , Red Wings , Blackhawks 1997-2010 823 363 407 770
5 Pavol Demitra Senators , Blues , Kings , Wild , Canucks 1993-2009 819 301 451 752
6th Miroslav Šatan Oilers , Sabers , Islanders , Penguins , Bruins 1995-2010 1050 363 367 735
7th Žigmund Pálffy Islanders , Kings , Penguins 1993-2006 684 329 384 713
8th Jozef Stümpel Bruins , Kings , Panthers 1991-2007 957 196 481 677
9 Anton Šťastný Nordiques 1980-1989 650 252 384 636
10 Marián Gáborík Wild , Rangers 2000-2010 578 261 262 523
11 Michal Handzuš Blues , Coyotes , Flyers , Blackhawks , Kings 1998-2010 762 160 245 404
12 Richard Zedník Capitals , Islanders , Canadiens , Panthers 1995-2009 745 200 179 379
13 Zdeno Chára Islanders , Senators , Bruins 1997-2010 847 111 252 363
14th Ľubomír Višňovský Kings , Oilers , Ducks 2000-2010 622 93 262 355
15th Róbert Švehla Panthers , Maple Leafs 1994-2003 655 68 267 335
16 Marián Šťastný Nordiques , Maple Leafs 1981-1986 322 121 173 294
17th Ladislav Nagy Blues , coyotes , stars , kings 1999-2007 397 106 179 285
18th Peter Ihnačák Maple Leafs 1982-1990 417 102 165 267
19th Zdeno Cíger Devils , Oilers , Rangers , Lightning 1990-1996
2001-2002 		352 94 134 228
20th Marek Svatoš Avalanche , Predators 2003-2010 316 96 68 164

goalkeeper

Surname Teams Playing times Sp Min S. N N n. V. SO GTS Sv%
1 Peter Budaj Avalanche 2005-2010 197 10,872 86 70 23 8th 2.74 90.3
2 Jaroslav Halák Canadiens , blues 2006-2010 101 5,758 56 34 7th 9 2.62 91.9
3 Rastislav Staňa Capitals 2003-2004 6th 211 1 2 0 0 3.13 89.0
4th Ján Lašák Predators 2001-2003 6th 267 0 4th 0 0 4.04 87.4

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ slovensko.com, What sports and games are the most popular in Slovakia? ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.slovensko.com
  2. ↑ iihf.com, About Slovakia Hockey
  3. ↑ PREHĽAD ZÁPASOV A-tímu SR od roku 1940 - games of the senior national team since 1940. In: hockeyslovakia.sk. Retrieved July 12, 2017 (Slovak).
  4. ↑ a b c hockeyfans.ch, How brotherly love became rivalry
  5. ↑ hockeyfans.ch, Olympia 2006: Slovakia - If only it weren't for the goalkeeper
  6. ↑ hockeyfans.ch, Slovakia - A team with something special
  7. ↑ hockeyfans.ch, Olympic preview : Das Mittelfeld
  8. ↑ hockeyfans.ch, U20 World Cup: Slovakia - relegation round or classification games
  9. ↑ Building the future in Puchov. In: iihf.com. February 17, 2009, accessed July 12, 2017 .
  10. ↑ sports.espn.go.com, Bulgaria gives up 139 shots on goal in 82-0 women's hockey loss
  11. ↑ Russian league tops first CHL ranking. In: iihf.com. March 7, 2008, accessed July 12, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Slovak league erupts with bang. In: iihf.com. October 10, 2009, accessed July 12, 2017 .
  13. ^ Lener & Co. paint bleak picture. In: iihf.com. August 24, 2010, accessed July 12, 2017 .
  14. ^ From Poprad to the Big Apple. In: iihf.com. October 13, 2008, accessed July 12, 2017 .
  15. ^ Strangers in Slovakia. In: iihf.com. Retrieved July 12, 2017 (English).
  16. ^ MHC Martin wins Continental Cup. In: International Ice Hockey Federation . January 18, 2009, accessed July 12, 2017 .
  17. ↑ nhl.com, Regular Season - All Skaters - Slovakia
  18. ↑ quanthockey.com, Slovak NHL Players - All-Time Stats
  19. ↑ Developing masked men. In: iihf.com. January 12, 2010, accessed July 12, 2017 .

Web links

Commons : Ice Hockey in Slovakia  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files