Twenty-six-year-old Koch, who has 33 starts and ten points for three goals and seven assists in the extraleague season so far, was guilty of 36 laps on the Energie ice on Sunday. In the closing 47th minute, with the score 2:0 for Ostrava, he hit Juusola hard near the blue line.
The Finn had a hard time getting up from the ice, but managed to reach the Karlovy Vary switchboard by himself. Koch received a penalty of five minutes and the rest of the game for assault. In the end, Vítkovic took home a 3:1 win from the west of Bohemia and continues to keep pace with the leaders Pardubice, to whom they only have a two-point deficit.
“It was an intervention in which he was not interested in the puck, but only in the opponent who pushed the puck around him and he hit him in the head with his shoulder. For this reason, we also reclassified the original penalty from assault to a hit in the head and neck area. It is hockey, I take it, the body can play, but it must not play in the head,” emphasized Ujčík.
Koch was aggravated by the fact that since mid-March last year he had been disciplined for the third time. “And for the third time in less than a year, it was the same offense – again it’s a hit to the head and neck area. For me, it was an intervention for three matches, but the recurrence was reflected there. That’s why we added one more match, so that the the player realized that something was probably wrong,” said Ujčík.
