Coach Filip Pešán and assistant Martin Straka on the hockey team’s substitute.
Vlastimil Vacek, Right
–
When I looked at the TOP 50 of the Canadian KHL scoring, the Swedish, Finnish and Swiss top leagues, I found that we only have eleven players in them. In Switzerland, the third Červenka is excellent, the fifth is Špaček in Sweden and Jašek in Finland. But these two were in Karjala. While I liked Špaček, Jašek was invisible and disappointed me. He showed nothing at all.
But who do we have next? Who else will represent? Before the tournament, I heard that we want to try out players who could represent them in the future. But who are they supposed to be ?! We don’t have any! It’s a tragedy!
Pešán about the state of Czech hockey: Nothing good when the backup teams and Russian juniors are enough for us
–
On Sunday, the 18-year-old defender Koromyslov, who plays in the Russian junior competition, competed against us as the seventh bulk of the team. Where do we have such players? Nowhere, because they are not. We cannot be represented by a Frenchman or a Slovenian from the extra league, we need Czech players. And we just don’t really have you.
–
Coach Filip Pešán (left) and Michal Řepík (right) during the training of the hockey team before the Karlaja Cup tournament.
Vlastimil Vacek, Right
And that’s the worst message Karjala has given us. It’s not at all that we finished last, that something went wrong, that we failed tactically and quickly. Coach Pešán said that he can’t teach players to finish in a national team, that they have to know it from clubs. Well, we all know that. But where do we have those players?
The idea that someone will fall from the sky will represent us and we will start winning tournaments is simply not possible. We can only make a team, for example, following the example of Finland, that we will push the players from the extra league more and supplement them with the excellent ones from foreign competitions.
–
Jere Innala (left) and Teem Tallberg rejoice in his goal against the Czech Republic.
Markku Ulander, CTK / AP
We have to start working to improve the junior and youth competitions, but also the Chance League and the Extra League. We need to start educating competitive players, because now we have seen with our own eyes that we have absolutely no chance.
The Russians playfully defeated us and the young boys and set up a mirror for Czech hockey. It is a view that all the people on the executive committee and the union have been defending here for eight years. The seventh place at the World Cup in the final is not so terrible that …
We should think. We let them bathe there completely, Kaše apologized to the goalkeepers after Karjala
–
But when we look at the whole weekend, as the national teams of twenty, nineteen and eighteen went from defeat to defeat, it is clear that we are pathetic! For eight decades, everyone has been trying to tell us how it should be done, competitions are constantly changing, but it’s useless.
| A terrifying week of Czech hockey teams |
| And the team |
| Sweden 1: 4 |
| Finland 2: 4 |
| Russia 2: 5 |
| Twenty |
| Sweden 0: 5 |
| Russia 3: 5 |
| Finland 2: 4 |
| Nineteen |
| Finland 2: 1 |
| Finland 1: 4 |
| Finland 2: 4 |
| Eighteen |
| Sweden 0: 2 |
| USA 1:9 |
| Finland 4: 5 |
| Switzerland 0: 2 |
And now we see the picture of our hockey. We are starting to be in a position where we are replaced by players who are not enough for the Russian, Swedish or Finnish ones.
The Swedes come to the Euro Hockey Tour and have a face. They play with the defenders, they get a puck, they shoot and they have a huge pressure on the gate. Finns are excellent and strong for the puck, they can turn with him and stop fighting. The Russians arrived with 15 players of the year 2000 and younger … But how did the Czech national team present itself? Did anyone see the pressure in the gate? Technical sophistication? Game speed? Combinations? I didn’t see anything like that there.
From our team at Karjala, only Špaček and Jeřábek, who is capable of a game that has a head and a heel, could fight for the Olympics. But the rest? Just look at the backs that our coaches claim could go to the World Cup next year … For Christ’s sake, can’t they really mean that ?! There may be one for MS, but that’s all.
Hockey sadness. The Czechs lost everything at Karjala, they took too late against the choir
–
To sum it up, in the current situation we are completely exhausted in terms of players and we no longer have much choice. For the coach (Pesan) and the manager (Nedvěd), the team that will be competitive at the December tournament in Moscow will build a nut.
The coaches’ ideas were to try out players like Špaček and Jašek, who should be the new blood of the national team in the future. Okay, but we have two to three such younger players. The rest is not here.
And that’s the saddest thing. We have completely destroyed the youth competitions, so we are no longer educating players. And we are still amazed. We have a lot of skilled players in the youth and junior leagues in Sweden and Finland. They would rather leave than improve our competitions. This is not the fault of their parents or clubs. This is the fault of our competition, which is so poor that boys prefer to go abroad.
–
| Milan Antos (51) is a former hockey forward, now an assistant to the coach of the Slavia youth and a co-commentator of the Czech Television. He played the Czech extra league for twelve seasons, playing for Slavia, Plzeň, Jihlava and Ústí nad Labem. He won the title with the people of Prague in 2003 and bronze in 2000, and silver with the West Bohemians four years later. |
– .
