WC hockey 2023 | ANTOŠ’S RAZOR: We don’t play hockey. This is supposed to entertain the sold-out hall at the WC in Prague?!

On that occasion, I thought of a couple of hockey topics that are currently being discussed in the Czech Republic. The first thing that struck me was that no one here asks and is not surprised that in ten years the Swiss outsiders became the favorites and overtook us. In mutual matches, we already take them as the stronger and better one. And we would probably behave exactly the same way if we played Germany at the World Cup this year.

But instead of answering questions about how this could happen, the question is whether Kari Jalonen should stay. As a matter of principle, I am in favor of compliance with contracts, and this also applies in this case. But what to think about; especially for the executive committee; is whether the system and style of play we presented at the championship would entertain over 17,000 people in the O2 arena at the next home World Cup. I highly doubt it.

We simply cannot play this style. Take this year’s surprises from the Germans and Latvians. It was based on the fact that they tried to attack, play aggressively, attack. They were just trying to play hockey. And I haven’t seen that with ours. I kept waiting for when we would finally unpack it, but it never came.

And here, no one thinks about why we are suddenly at the tail end, why we end the World Cup with the worst ranking in history. Everyone is just asking if we trade Jalonen. After all, that’s a secondary question. The main thing is to change the style, play actively and take young players to the championship. After all, it’s not normal for the Germans to nominate six players with a year of birth starting with a number two, and we didn’t have a single one there! We keep telling ourselves that we are going forward, but we are going backwards. To me, this is completely out of line.

I don’t really care if the executive committee favors Jalonen’s end or his stay. But we cannot fill Prague’s O2 arena with such performance and want people to have fun. If we want to please them, we have to do it with hockey. Not with the system that we defend the middle zone and after the match we say that we wanted to play aggressively, but it doesn’t look like that at all.

At the championships in Tampere and Riga, considering the other results, we could have easily won a medal. But we had such a badly formed team and we played with such a system that we are not able to generate that surprise. We don’t play hockey. We are just waiting to see what the opponent will do.

The Germans and Latvians were in crisis at a certain stage of the tournament, they were not in a good mood, but they still played very actively. Even in the semi-finals or final against Canada. We would just back off and wait to see if they would pour it on us. The way we did it in the first period with Canada in the group.

And that’s just the mistake. We can’t surprise or outplay anyone like this, because we’re not used to that style. There is actually nothing to criticize about our game, because the WC did not go well at all. We would not have won the medal even if we had fought for it with the Germans. Because they simply played better – actively, aggressively, they skated, they matched Canada in the final. As did the Latvians in the bronze medal match for America.

And again I return to the question of where and where we want to go. Do we have someone else in Europe instead of Červenka? Who will play all those key situations after him? We don’t have a single player who could replace him. We all hoped for this from Špágr (Michael Špaček), but he was invisible in the championship.