Also in 2008 was Slovak team very close. In the playout games vs Slovenia they won first game. But the second one only in shootouts. If they had lost this second game, there were 3. game on schedule. And who knows, how would it end?
But now i dont think, they are close to relegation.
I agree with you. We played without any system for many years, relying only on our talented players that they somehow win.
When our best generation was slowly retiring, we started to have serious problems.
Thanks to God Miro Satan became our GM and he named Craig Ramsey for our couch. I can see on our way of game that it has some system... finally. Of course there is no such talent as in the past, but still I think that we belong on maybe 8th/9th place in the world ..
Hopefully we stopped our decline. now it is time to change many things in the hockey infrastructure, education, motivation, trustworthiness so the sponsors will invest more money into hockey, we need to eliminate or completely remove corruption, etc..
I think our hockey federation is already doing some changes but IMO they could do it more quickly although it is still better than doing nothing as our previous management...
Craig Ramsey wondered himself that we changed nothing but were expecting better results... insane