The Litvínov hockey players started the extra league season so poorly that they revived memories of the tragic performances of some clubs that are no longer even active in the top competition. 23 years ago, Havířov was the record scorer of the extra league.
A completely new implementation team, health indisposition of the supports and uncertainty caused by the announced departure of the general partner. Due to the interplay of these factors, Litvínov is experiencing an extremely bad start to the year.
He went on a streak of ten defeats in a row, won only three out of eighteen matches in total and, for example, in mid-October in Vítkovice, he lost 1:8 already in the 26th minute.
He landed hard at the bottom of the table, losing nine points to his nearest opponent.
Currently, Litvínov has nine points out of a possible 54, which means a poor overall success rate of 16.7 percent.
Such a balance invites comparison with historical losers.
Not even the coach from the national team helped
Havířov collected the fewest points in the 2002/03 season, which was the last extra-league season for the club, which currently operates in the third highest competition. The Panthers finished with 20 points, with a 12.8 shooting percentage.
In the first four rounds, Havířov scored 24 goals and Josef Augusta replaced Kamil Konečný as coach. However, even the personality who previously led the national team to a golden hat-trick at the World Cup from the position of head coach did not help.
“They don’t have excessive ambitions in Havířov. I will work with young people who need to play,” Augusta was looking forward to. He did not want to address the fact that the club’s financial problems were leaking to the public.
A few days and several defeats later, he was already somewhat gloomy.
“Everyone above us has better teams. It looks like the next matches for us will only be preparation for a tie with the winner of the first league,” he assessed.
In the end, August’s mission lasted only 13 laps, then František Vorlíček and Radomír Kužílk took over the team. After the first quarter, Havířov was hopelessly last with three points.
August’s prediction was thus confirmed. The team could have actually been preparing for the playoffs throughout the season, but while some players left Havířov, the club had no money for reinforcements.
In the playoff, the team around veterans Tomáš Sršná and Petr Hrbek lost to the first league winner Kladno, Havířov dropped out of the extra league after four years.
Powerless in a star-studded league
Jihlava scored 24 points for the entire regular season, i.e. only four more than Havířov, two years later. It thus achieved a success rate of approximately 15.4 percent.
As an extra-league rookie, she started the season in a televised match, and immediately scored a goal in the first substitution. But since then things have gone downhill with Dukla.
While the other teams lit up the NHL stars, whose ban lasted for the whole season, Jihlava did not get anyone from overseas.
She reserved the last place for herself and when she did not win twenty-three times in a row between October 22, 2004 and January 7, 2005, her participation in the play-off series was definitively decided.
However, the stars from the NHL trampled on Dukla there as well. České Budějovice was led by Václav Prospal, Radek Dvořák and Canadian Andrew Ference, with Roman Turk in goal.
The South Czechs eliminated Jihlava in five games and returned the play-off defeat from 2004. Prospal and Dvořák subsequently extended their season at the golden championship in Vienna.
The third worst result in the regular season (calculated from the 2000/01 season, when the extra league is played with a three-point system) was recorded by Chomutov in the 2013/14 year. He scored 27 points, which means 17.3 percent of all possible.
Litvínov is currently below this level with his success rate of 16.7.
However, North Bohemia cannot be written off prematurely. On Sunday, Sparta only entered the second third of the regular season on the ice, moreover, after the return of the brothers Ondřej and David Kaš, Litvínov’s performances increased.
Thirteenth Mladá Boleslav is also struggling. She fired coach Richard Krále, and the nine-point deficit does not seem indelible at the moment.
On the other hand, the extremely gloomy mood among the fans who went on strike in Friday’s home match against Liberec, or the speculation about the possible departure of the aforementioned Kaš brothers to Pardubice, which was reported by the newspaper Sport last week, is certainly not in Litvínov’s favor.
