Extraliga: Kovář’s Surprise & Top Stories

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Every season has its surprises. List The News selected the five biggest shocks of the first half of the Olympic year.

We were surprised by two defenders. Especially Jan Košťálek was not expected to steal such a strong position in Pardubice.

An unpleasant surprise is that Vítkovice get a lot of goals under the dictates of coach Václav Varadi. The renowned defensive expert still has a lot of work to do.

There is absolutely no point in deciding who is first, third or sixth. The table is still so balanced that two defeats in a row could easily mean a drop down five levels. At the time of publication of the text, Liberec was second, but this is not something that fascinates so much.

They clearly play like a confident top team and you can see it often.

He knows how to outplay opponents, achieves results through active hockey. It is also a good advertisement for the extra league that a different formation works in the regular season than the much-celebrated defensive wall that regularly dominates in the playoffs.

The White Tigers can be described as one of the most active teams in the extra league. The team is building a relatively clear face under the new head coach Jiří Kudrna. She is aggressive.

As a result, it is fun that Liberec is still not perfect. The data shows that it can be even better, which can be a big worry for giants like Pardubice or Sparta. Expected goals scored in five-on-five play shows a value of 2.6 (only Pardubice is better – 2.75) per 60 minutes of play. In reality, however, Liberec is at number 2.17. It means that he still has reserves in converting chances.

So in translation: Liberec can be even more dangerous.

He still has reserves in powerhouses, where he has a tragic success rate of 15 percent.

The Tigers have room to grow, which is good news for them, bad news for others.

They managed to defeat the strong Pardubice three times, which is an impressive calling card. If they adjust the details, with goalkeeper Petr Kváča, they can easily knock out the favorite in the playoffs.

Transfers were also successful. Liberec’s productivity is led by three players (Radan Lenc, Filip Sandberg and Jaromír Pytlík) who arrived in the summer.

Liberec is a team that looks great and should be even better. He quickly got over the fact that Filip Pešán had left. Michal Birner built the team well and coach Kudrna leads it correctly.

When Pardubice lost the seventh final against Třinec in 2024, club owner Petr Dědek sent defender Jan Košťálek into exile in Ostrava.

It seemed to Dynamo that the performance of one of the most offensive defenders in the extra league was falling too quickly. It did not buy him out of contract, but sent him on loan.

It was expected that after a year in Vítkovice, Pardubice would get rid of him permanently. He shows up at training, both sides say it won’t work any further and goodbye.

But the back caught the eye from the start. He looked hopeful, then interesting, finally wonderful. He won back his place in the bloated squad. In terms of offensive activities, he is the most outstanding fullback in the competition.

The 30-year-old defenseman is in the top ten in scoring in the entire league, which is a very good feat for a defender. Right now, he’s on pace for 45 points, which would surpass his career high (41 points) from the 2021/22 season. He could easily attack the competition record held by Martin Hamrlík with 46 points.

The biggest progress Košťálek has made is that he is not shot in only one offensive statistic, while the defensive one would be on fire in his performance.

He improved from an overall contributor to the team in five-on-five play. More complexity makes it a star.

He is among the ten elite backs in the league who can get the puck out of their own third by passing and in the number of shots that defenders fire at the opponent’s goal.

Self-confidence is also reflected in solving defensive situations, where before he often only shadowed. He doesn’t back down when the puck is aimed at his players. He can “cut” the shot in front of the opponent many times even before it reaches him.

And powerups? There, Košťálek becomes a downright weapon of mass destruction. He has already collected fifteen points in them, and in the attached graphic you can see where his office is in numerical advantages.

He is comfortable with his position at the blue line at the top of the power play formation. He usually has Roman Červenka on his right hand and Miguel Tourigny on his left.

Košťálek can shoot well without preparation, which has been his great asset since returning from overseas to Sparta in 2018. He also scored a total of 65 goals in the extra league.

It surprised many that he can be at least as good as he was in his prime four years ago. If he can handle the second half of the season like this, even with the playoffs, he will be better than ever.

The soul of defensive magician Václav Varadi must bleed.

Coach Vítkovic belongs to people who enjoy 2:1 and 1:0 wins. For him, outshooting his opponent 8:6 is more of a signal that a lot of things are not working, than a topic for celebrations.

That’s how he’s always been and it’s hard to change.

But on average, Vítkovice get 2.93 goals per match. This is a statistic in which they are second. From the end.

They have one of the worst defenses in the league, and beware, goalkeeper Dominik Hrachovina was able to erase a lot of problems. According to the analytical module hokej.LOGIC, he scored 12.6 more goals than expected. So at least twelve clear goals were saved by his form.

A very big problem for Vítkovice is weakening, which Varaď is unable to adjust. The success rate of 71.58 percent is the worst record in the league.

Positive data? Last season, the team finished at a value of 68 percent, which can no longer be considered even as an extra league. So even the current miserable number means improvement.

The weakening of Vítkovice is well illustrated by the heatmaps. A distinct red area can be seen on the defensive thirds of Varaď’s group. It marks the place where the opponent most often gets shots and runs when Vítkovice is weakened.

For comparison, we also add a picture of what the weakening of Pilsen looks like. There is far less red in it.

Vítkovice goes to first place in one rather unflattering statistic. They are the team that loses the most pucks in five-on-five and the opponent gets to shoot.

It follows from the fact that Varaď’s team complicates life enough on its own. Vítkovice also lose a lot of pucks in their own defensive third. At the same time, this is the discipline that a strict coach always relies on: the puck should have the easiest possible way out.

Libor Zábranský has made a name for himself in Komet as a defender who will do absolutely everything to help his team win.

In the last playoff, he blocked 64 shots, which was 21 more than the second-ranked Tomáš Dvořák from Pardubice. Zábranský had great merit in the impenetrability of the Brno defense dam. His dedication fit exactly into Brno’s style and he made a significant contribution to winning the title.

Now he shows another aspect of the game – he has a hammer in his hands.

Ten goals in 27 games is a big contribution for Kometa. The Galvas brothers (Tomáš in Liberec and Jakub in Třinec), Miguel Tourigny in Pardubice or Filip Král in Brno are completely different types of defenders. These are offensive players who either skate well or are creative (or both) and can make a loop.

But Zábranský has more goals than the most skilled defenders in the league, he can sell his shot. In addition, he can shoot with his wrist when he gets close to the goal. For example, this is how he decided to extend with České Budějovice.

But his goals have another charm, they fall at the right time. He has already collected four winning goals, which is the best performance in the entire competition. None of the star strikers has more than the bomber from Brno.

The premise seemed to be that nothing much would change. Veteran Jakub Kovář slowly moved into the position of covering Josef Kořenář’s back in Sparta. The younger partner is among the first choices of national team coaches when they look at European goalkeepers, Kořenář is entering the prime of his career at the age of 27.

But the thirty-seven-year-old goalkeeper turned the assumptions on their head.

He has a significantly higher performance than his partner, so already at the beginning of December he has played roughly the same number of matches as for the whole of last year.

Traditionally, the most watched goalkeeper statistic is the success rate of saves, in which Kovář is the best in the entire league (93.16 percent).

But this number can be further dissected. Kovář holds the second best success rate among goalkeepers in the league against shots from the slot, i.e. from close range (87.97 percent).

He reads the game well, he does not look wild in the goal, which is also related to the high success rate of 92.77 percent against shots from the first after the cross pass. He sets himself against the shooter in time, he knows what is happening in front of him. No one in the competition has better value against undrafted shots than him.

Goals caught above expectations are also an important statistical value. They are calculated in such a way that each shot location has a certain probability of how easy or difficult it is to score goals. The value also changes depending on whether the goalkeeper had to move or whether the shooter shot from the first.

The calculation shows that Kovář prevented about ten goals that the team should have conceded statistically. Sparta’s advantage is that she doesn’t have to kill him. Kovář gets a maximum of two to three games in a row, then it’s Kořenář’s turn.

The younger of the pair has a success rate of only 90.5%. But gradually his performance is rising. He currently managed two good matches in a row in Pardubice and České Budějovice with a success rate of over 92%.

Sparta could have the best goalkeeper duo in the extra league in the second half of the season.