WC: 2015 — Team Slovakia

[slovakiasnextone]

Excellent statement today by ex-coach Filc that coach Vůjtek should have resigned after Sochi, or after last year's Worlds at the latest:

http://www.hokej.sk/2015/clanok1314...iba_chce_za_Vujteka_Cigera_Hascak_Bokrosa.htm

Just some blind posters here keep claiming the opposite.

Yeah, because Filc is the one who should be talking about other coaches resigning after a disaster. And I'm not talking about the 2002 Olympics, rather about the 2009 Worlds with some great stuff like these games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phh-CoPYp60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rXKBV4kuDw

and additionally despite the success at the 2010 Olympics (where he also was just one Satan goal against Norway away from a disappoining showing), he has absolutely failed when it came to doing something about the NT rebuild, even more than Vujtek IMO.

I'm not saying that Vujtek shouldn't have been done after Sochi (and by now I think he believes he would have been a happier man if he had done so), but those words coming from Filc of all people are funny.

Though he is right about the 4 Olympic cycle and the coaching at home stuff being bollocks. To be fair to Vujtek though, he did offerhis resignation after Sochi, Nemecek and co. not accepting it is a different matter.

 

[Faterson]

Eh, what are you talking about? Filc was prompt in resigning after lack of success, and even after the biggest success ever (gold medal).

 

[slovakiasnextone]

Eh, what are you talking about? Filc was prompt in resigning after lack of success, and even after the biggest success ever (gold medal).

Actually he only ever resigned after success.

I'm pretty sure he didn't resign after the 2002 Olympics nor the 2009 WC (which was a worse showing than any of the WCs under Vujtek with being 13 minutes away from giving at least a point at Hungary and getting blown out by 8 goals by the Czechs).

Quite sneaky of him, should have told Vujtek to resign back in 2012. When you only ever resign after success, it makes it easy to make people forget the times where you didn't fare anywhere near as well.

 

[Faterson]

Have you maybe drunk too much after today's defeat? Of course he resigned after 2009. I see no big difference between 2009 and 2015. What's so bad about defeating Hungary 4-3? At least we did defeat them, and in regulation, something Vůjtek was unable to do this year with a single team apart from relegated Slovenia.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

Have you maybe drunk too much after today's defeat? Of course he resigned after 2009. I see no big difference between 2009 and 2015. What's so bad about defeating Hungary 4-3? At least we did defeat them, and in regulation, something Vůjtek was unable to do this year with a single team apart from relegated Slovenia.

Really who did coach Slovakia at the 2010 Olympics then?

Of course unless you are a fan of the conspiracies about how it was actually the players who coached themselves under him, both in the early 2000s and in Vancouver.

Yeah, let's forget those 13 seconds before the game was over fact. Also with all due respect to Team Hungary 2009, you seriouly can't be comparing that team to the likes of Team Belarus 2015 made up from KHL players (and not just ones from Dinamo Minsk).

Also, love how you glanced over that 0:8 loss to the Czechs.

 

[Cruor]

Excellent statement today by ex-coach Filc that coach Vůjtek should have resigned after Sochi, or after last year's Worlds at the latest:

http://www.hokej.sk/2015/clanok1314...iba_chce_za_Vujteka_Cigera_Hascak_Bokrosa.htm

Just some blind posters here keep claiming the opposite.

Some very candid view points there, I took the liberty and translated Otto Hascaks input:

Before the WHC I didn't expect us missing the quarters. I thought we'd advance without any major issues. When we started struggling against the Danes and other, on paper, worse opponents I was bewildered. The boys fought well but tons of things were missing - tactics, the transition game, PP. The coaches were mixing lines like a pot of gulasch. In every game we iced a different attacking line, which I don't think helped mentally. I also can't understand benching our captain Kopecky. I've never seen anything like it, it's very unorthodox. If it had happened in a club setting, or CHL I would understand but this are the world championships. The best competition in Europe. It shouldn't have happened.

Concering the players from the NHL, they themselves expected much more out of themselves. Tatar and Jurco really wanted it, you could see it, but they weren't scoring. Tatar just had a great season in Detroit and was shocked his scoring dried up. Still, they are young guys who needs a more senior team presence that leads the scoring. Gaborik didn't play as well as he'd expect either. In the PP we chose the wrong lineups, if it was up to me i'd play completely different players. We only have two right hand shots in the team. Miklik, who has a good shot, is sitting on the bench. I can't understand the makeup of the offence, I'd put it together entirely differently. There was no chemistry, they didn't work together. And I don't think it's just my opinion either. It's a question for the coaches and the team around them, how they prepared for the WHC and how they put it together. Jaros is our best defender, and because he is 19 they don't pick him? It's laughable. That type of player, who has a future, should be playing in the first or second defensive pairing. Same with Kozak, he wouldn't have played any worse than the others who came. Same with Ceresnak, he wasn't bad in the lead-up. I don't want to point fingers, but some of the players had no business being here. Some of them came here totally unprepared.

We don't have good quality coaches in Slovakia. We have one, really good and experienced coach who's in his 20's. Why not give him a chance? It's the only suitable candidate for the coaching spot, amongst other Slovak coaches we have no one better. Concerning a foreign head coach, it's questionable if the Federation has the money to pay the Swedes or Canadians. We saw where the Czech road led. He was here four years. I'm not saying it was all bad, they got a silver after all. They deserve recognition for that. But, if you ask me if we employ a Czech coach we can just as well employ a Slovak. I can't see a big difference there.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

We have one, really good and experienced coach who's in his 20's. Why not give him a chance?

I'm pretty sure Bokros isn't in his 20s anymore. "who's with the u20 team" is what the article says.

As for why not, well who's gonna coach the u20 team then?

But he does make some fair points.

And there's Liba bringing up Ciger as possible coach. What's up with everyone wanting him as the coach? Even if we omit the discussioon on whether he'd be a good candidate, there's nothing that suggest he'd want to move away from his current work with kids.

 

[Cruor]

I'm pretty sure Bokros isn't in his 20s anymore. "who's with the u20 team" is what the article says.

As for why not, well who's gonna coach the u20 team then?

But he does make some fair points.

And there's Liba bringing up Ciger as possible coach. What's up with everyone wanting him as the coach? Even if we omit the discussioon on whether he'd be a good candidate, there's nothing that suggest he'd want to move away from his current work with kids.

Thanks, I was unsure how to translate it and didn't bother to look it up

 

[jcbio11]

Excellent statement today by ex-coach Filc that coach Vůjtek should have resigned after Sochi, or after last year's Worlds at the latest:

http://www.hokej.sk/2015/clanok1314...iba_chce_za_Vujteka_Cigera_Hascak_Bokrosa.htm

Just some blind posters here keep claiming the opposite.

He did offer his resignation after the Sochi debacle. The hockey federation refused it and told him to stay. What was he supposed to do?

Overall, yeah, his last three tourneys were disappointing, but he did have that silver medal run, so pretty decent venture I'd say.

His biggest failure was the inability to adapt a more modern, offensive type of game plan, for which for example this WC team with 7 NHLers was suited for. Gaborik, Tatar, Jurco, Panik, Dano (before injury) etc. and we still tried to play very conservatively. That worked wonders in that silver medal year witch Chara and Sekera, but not this year.

 

[Ralgo]

Sorry for the Slovakias team - the US game should have been urs. It was pretty much as our game with sweden. To those smart guys saying its all Vujteks fault....may be. He wanted to resign, your people didnt want it. He may not be the best (ofc) - yet dont you think problem is in players too?

 

[begbeee]

I'm pretty sure Bokros isn't in his 20s anymore. "who's with the u20 team" is what the article says.

As for why not, well who's gonna coach the u20 team then?

But he does make some fair points.

And there's Liba bringing up Ciger as possible coach. What's up with everyone wanting him as the coach? Even if we omit the discussioon on whether he'd be a good candidate, there's nothing that suggest he'd want to move away from his current work with kids.

In the article there is a typical slovak mentality in the Hascak answer, something in the style: "I don´t understand why should we have czech coach, there is no meaning and difference in it, we rather can have slovakian coach."
He weight rather than coach´s experience his nationality. Probably to boost up a chances some of his fellows.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

In the article there is a typical slovak mentality in the Hascak answer, something in the style: "I don´t understand why should we have czech coach, there is no meaning and difference in it, we rather can have slovakian coach."
He weight rather than coach´s experience his nationality. Probably to boost up a chances some of his fellows.

Actually that's not the feeling I get from his words unlike from what the likes of Palffy and Ciger have been saying lately.

He actually even outright says that our coaches are bad (he makes the one exception, which is Bokros), so I think the point he's making is that the Czech coaches aren't all that good either - and if you look at the recent history of how the coaches of their own national team went in recent years, it does seem like he might have a point. He kinda indirectly says that a Canadian/Swedish coach would be preferable over most Slovak coaches, but since getting one is expensive...

 

[Faterson]

Really who did coach Slovakia at the 2010 Olympics then?

Wah-hah-hah! I'm really not surprised by Slovakia's failures anymore if you consider that many Slovakia fans, particularly the Vůjtek fans on these boards, seem to take failures for granted. Failure as the norm, and success as exception.

Everyone knew Filc would be coaching at the Vancouver Olympics and that the preceding Worlds were the warm-up, so what's your point? My point is that Filc never pushed himself forwards while lacking success. After that phenomenal Vancouver success he could have stayed on as head-coach for 10 more years, but didn't.

The excuse that Vůjtek had offered his resignation after Sochi is pointless. No one can force a coach to perform a job he no longer wishes to perform. Regardless of whether this happened to oblige Vůjtek or against his wishes (you really think so?!), the real point is that Vůjtek should no longer have been Slovakia's coach after Sochi or last year's Worlds, and this year's failure of Slovakia at the Worlds is also the responsibility of the coaching staff / those who (re-)hired them (doesn't really matter).

What "glancing over 0-8"? I couldn't possibly care less. The 0-6 loss against Denmark was much worse, in my opinion. The Czechoslovak team in its famous silver/golden 1980s era once lost 1-11 at the Worlds to the Russians. So what? My point is that Filc never again led Slovakia at the Worlds after failing to reach the play-offs in 2009, whereas you guys are ecstatically celebrating Vůjtek and want to build statues for him after he failed to reach play-offs in 2 straight Worlds tourneys and after exploding at Sochi. Vůjtek had one huge success with Slovakia over the years, and that's it. With every passing year, that silver success looked more and more accidental. It's not just the bad Worlds and Olympic results, but Slovakia also kept losing friendly and preparation tourney games against embarrassingly lowly opponents throughout Vůjtek's tenure. To call Vůjtek's era, overall, a "success", really cannot be justified. It's mind-boggling what low standards some folks must have in order to call the last 4 years a "success" for Slovakia.

 

[Jakk123]

Wah-hah-hah! I'm really not surprised by Slovakia's failures anymore if you consider that many Slovakia fans, particularly the Vůjtek fans on these boards, seem to take failures for granted. Failure as the norm, and success as exception.

Everyone knew Filc would be coaching at the Vancouver Olympics and that the preceding Worlds were the warm-up, so what's your point? My point is that Filc never pushed himself forwards while lacking success. After that phenomenal Vancouver success he could have stayed on as head-coach for 10 more years, but didn't.

The excuse that Vůjtek had offered his resignation after Sochi is pointless. No one can force a coach to perform a job he no longer wishes to perform. Regardless of whether this happened to oblige Vůjtek or against his wishes (you really think so?!), the real point is that Vůjtek should no longer have been Slovakia's coach after Sochi or last year's Worlds, and this year's failure of Slovakia at the Worlds is also the responsibility of the coaching staff / those who (re-)hired them (doesn't really matter).

What "glancing over 0-8"? I couldn't possibly care less. The 0-6 loss against Denmark was much worse, in my opinion. The Czechoslovak team in its famous silver/golden 1980s era once lost 1-11 at the Worlds to the Russians. So what? My point is that Filc never again led Slovakia at the Worlds after failing to reach the play-offs in 2009, whereas you guys are ecstatically celebrating Vůjtek and want to build statues for him after he failed to reach play-offs in 2 straight Worlds tourneys and after exploding at Sochi. Vůjtek had one huge success with Slovakia over the years, and that's it. With every passing year, that silver success looked more and more accidental. It's not just the bad Worlds and Olympic results, but Slovakia also kept losing friendly and preparation tourney games against embarrassingly lowly opponents throughout Vůjtek's tenure. To call Vůjtek's era, overall, a "success", really cannot be justified. It's mind-boggling what low standards some folks must have in order to call the last 4 years a "success" for Slovakia.

You are starting to look really funny Once again, there are no "Vujtek fans" here, as you label them, just people who can appreciate. Are you seriously comparing Czechoslovakia losing 11:1 to USSR with us losing to Czechs 8:0? You just can't be serious anymore.


We are now one of the "lowly" opponents now, as you disrespectfully labeled them, maybe you should finally get that through your naive head.

Oh, and of course that the silver was "accidental" success, if you really expect us to medal every 4th year, you should visit a doctor.

While we are talking about your semi-god Filc, do you remember which coaching staff kept pairing our 4th line with Finland's top lines in the second half of 3rd period in Vancouver? What could that possibly lead to... hmmm let me think, maybe a penalty?

Once again, I hate low standards and I wish for Slovak hockey getting it's previous fame back. That does not mean that I am going to pretend that we are a stable top8 nation and will beat every "lowly " opponent.

 

[Jakk123]

Sorry for the Slovakias team - the US game should have been urs. It was pretty much as our game with sweden. To those smart guys saying its all Vujteks fault....may be. He wanted to resign, your people didnt want it. He may not be the best (ofc) - yet dont you think problem is in players too?

I definitely do, just some people probably can't get over it. Well, nobody needs to think so, it simply is a fact.

 

[begbeee]

On the paper we are still the best of this group.
In fact, results say that we are behind Switzerland recently.
Future...well, our NHLers are rather old...

 

[slovakiasnextone]

I definitely do, just some people probably can't get over it. Well, nobody needs to think so, it simply is a fact.

Of course you can't blame everything on a single person, whether it's the coach or a player scape goat like Kopecky this year or Marcel Hossa in the past.

However stuff that happened this year like shuffling the lines all games or the whole Kopecky captain story (putting him into a position that 99% of people knew he wouldn't fit and then sitting him and taking the C away from him when he unsurprisingly didn't fit them), sitting Dravecky in favor of guys who are out of form and after a catastrophic season on their own team are hardly the mark of good coaching.

This year was a collective failure of both the players and the staff, just like 2012 was a collective win of the staff and the players.

 

[Jakk123]

Of course you can't blame everything on a single person, whether it's the coach or a player scape goat like Kopecky this year or Marcel Hossa in the past.

However stuff that happened this year like shuffling the lines all games or the whole Kopecky captain story (putting him into a position that 99% of people knew he wouldn't fit and then sitting him and taking the C away from him when he unsurprisingly didn't fit them), sitting Dravecky in favor of guys who are out of form and after a catastrophic season on their own team are hardly the mark of good coaching.

This year was a collective failure of both the players and the staff, just like 2012 was a collective win of the staff and the players.

I do agree with that, but I just can't understand how can Faterson still expect us to always beat everyone from the "bottom 8"

 

[slovakiasnextone]

On the paper we are still the best of this group.
In fact, results say that we are behind Switzerland recently.
Future...well, our NHLers are rather old...

Well not all of them, 5 out of the 13 players mentioned are actually born 1990 or later (Tatar, Panik, Marincin, Jurco, Dano). But there's a 4+ year age difference between the oldest of them Tatar (24) and the next youngest Andrej Sekera (28 going on 29). IMO it's actually this gap for which we're paying the price right now.

We have to hope that moving forward there won't be such a gap again. It won't be easy, but it is possible. Slovakia was despite the misconceptions some have a country of 1st round NHL picks. Outside of Marian Hossa and Gaborik what made us successful was how many of our later round picks panned out.

Talking about Filc, one could say that his biggest achievements was the silver at the 2000 Worlds (unlike later tournaments with established players), where he build a team with a few NHL players (Chara and Suchy in their first full seasons, Bartecko, Handzus and Satan), but other than that it was a team built from players in their early 20s from Czech/Slovak leagues for whom the tourney opened the doors to the world of big hockey.

Btw, also interesting to look at the u20 team finishes since 2008: 4x 8th places, 1x 7th, 1x 6th, 1x4th and 1x 3rd. The u18 team has fared a bit worse in that time period, but more often than not there was at least one of the top players (who had the biggest chances to become future men's NT players) missing because CHL play-offs, injuries etc.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

Also while it most definitely shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor results or poor work of the federation and clubs nowadays, I think it's fair to say that we were punching above our weight in the early to mid 2000s, while the concurrence outside of the top 6 was perhaps smaller than today.

 

[Kamzik]

What are the implications of Slovakia's performance this year in terms of qualifying for the 2018 Winter Olympics?

I heard something about them losing direct qualification. Does anyone know if this is in fact true? If so, what must they do know to qualify for the Olympics?

 

[Jakk123]

What are the implications of Slovakia's performance this year in terms of qualifying for the 2018 Winter Olympics?

I heard something about them losing direct qualification. Does anyone know if this is in fact true? If so, what must they do know to qualify for the Olympics?

I think we will qualify directly, unless Belarus advances to the semifinal.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

Some people say that Belarus would need just playing in the SF, some say they need to finish 3rd or better, so I dunno.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

In the article there is a typical slovak mentality in the Hascak answer, something in the style: "I don´t understand why should we have czech coach, there is no meaning and difference in it, we rather can have slovakian coach."
He weight rather than coach´s experience his nationality. Probably to boost up a chances some of his fellows.

Lintner says that consdering how the trends in modern world hockey if we want to follow this trend it's necessary to cooperate with a Nothern American or Nothern European coach, whether as assistant or as main coach.

http://www.tvnoviny.sk/sport/ms-201...zradil-akeho-by-chcel-reprezentacneho-trenera

Though of course he never outright says it, that might have been what Hascak was saying - that the Czech coaches aren't all that good when it comes to modern hockey either.

Seems they're introducing the candidate for president on Wednesday.

 

[Hesher]

I wouldn't call Vujtek a one hit wonder. We made it into the QF in 2013, that's not a bad result. But the Olympics and everything that followed simply sucked.

Who's going to be the new coach? My pick would be Pokovic.

The most important thing right now is to get rid of Nemecek and his gang but I'm afraid they are here to stay until at least 2019.