Quarterfinals of the hockey extraleague playoff – 3rd match: HC Kometa Brno – HC Vítkovice Ridera, March 21, 2023, Brno. From the left, Czech hockey team coach Kari Jalonen and her former coach Alois Hadamczik.
Prague – The head of the ice hockey association, Alois Hadamczik, emphasized that when solving the sensitive issue of the composition of the implementation team for the national team for the next season, he is primarily looking to the future, rather than dealing with the past and the unsuccessful performance at the recent World Cup. But as he admitted during a meeting with journalists on the occasion of the meeting of the executive committee, he first needs answers to a number of questions. He himself previously announced that he would like to see the national team play in a different style than this year's WC in the next year, which will culminate in the domestic championship in Prague and Ostrava.
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Hadamczik wrote on Twitter shortly after being eliminated in the quarterfinals against the USA (0:3) that he would ask coach Kari Jalonen “for an explanation as to why creativity, courage, will and combativeness were lacking.” Today, the experienced Finn, but also assistant Libor Zábranský, along with goalkeeper coach Zdenek Orct and general manager Martin Havlát, presented their evaluations of the performances at the tournament in Riga and Tampere to the executive committee. The result is a request from the union leadership for a report with an outlook for the next season, which Havlát has to submit as the implementation team by June 20. According to her, the union will decide what to do next.
“Kari and Libor Zábranský were asked various questions today. They definitely want to change something. That's what the detailed report should be about. We didn't force Kari to directly change his style, because it's his style. But we want answers to why we played bad in weakening or why we scored few goals. However, we don't want to wallow in the past that we won't get back. We are looking forward. We want to know what vision the coaches will have going into it. And we want to have a team here in which we will have absolute confidence anyway, ” emphasized Hadamczik.
He appreciated that the meeting in Prague at the headquarters of the union was conducted in a constructive spirit. “It wasn't that anyone blamed anyone. The members of the executive committee were very helpful, curious, they asked about various things. Jarda Jágr asked a lot, Jirka Šlégr, Bedřich Ščerban… But the owners of the clubs also asked. One of the questions that I can say here was whether our extraliga is competitive with leagues in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, because we need to build a team from our players and then we will wait for players from the NHL. We want to hear from the guys that the Czech extraliga is of high quality and we are able to build three competitive fives for the named countries, even if they don't have players from the NHL,” said Hadamczik.
The required plan for the next season should be very detailed. “So that there is how the team will be assembled, what players, where to prepare them, how to play the Euro Hockey Tour. We want to know from a detailed report what vision we are coming to Prague with, how we want to assemble the team. That vision must change a little in order for hockey to be more aggressive and livelier and so that we, as spectators, feel that there is a huge commitment and will to achieve the maximum result for the Czech Republic. We believe that more players from the NHL will come to Prague, but that is just a belief. We have to plan so that the players , which we have available here, have been brought to the highest possible level,” Hadamczik declared.
“We want to know how to work with the team to get the best out of the players, so that the team has a good performance. No one from the executive committee believes that the movement of the players was at its maximum. We are looking for a way why it was so . We want to have much more active movement, aggressiveness… I don't want it to sound like the players didn't fight. But I want them to go into the match with balance, aim, will and joy to defeat the opponent,” added Hadamczik.
He believes that there is more in the players from the extra league than they showed at the World Cup in Latvia and Finland. “I am convinced that those players have more skill. And that is the main motive – how to get that skill out of the players. That is the main thing I would like to see in the report. Extraliga is recognized. It is not possible that we have worse players than Germany or Switzerland, when I talk about those who are active in Europe. I don't believe that we got the most out of the players. It is then a question of psychology and unblocking something. The coaches have to say how they see it and how they will do it to make the performance better.” stated Hadamczik.
He also wants to be clear about his competences in the future. “Information regarding the competences to tell us who is responsible for the selection of players was missing during the evaluation. We want to know whether the competences should be the same for Prague and who will be responsible for it; whether the entire implementation team, or maybe just the one who makes the decision, ” said Hadamczik.
He also commented on the possibility that the greatest competences – and also responsibility – would be transferred back to the shoulders of the general manager, as was the case in the previous season 2021/22, when Petr Nedvěd held this role.
“It depends on whether we want to go Canada's way or ours. I still take it as the fact that we are Czechs and we have our own mentality. Whether it's hockey or like the whole country. We've always had the main the coach, who had the main responsibility for this and respected whom he chose. We also asked if they wanted to continue working together. And it was heard from Kari Jalonen and Libor Zábranský that they did. Petr Nedvěd did a lot of good work in this role, but if is it the way to the future…? It can be one of the points to be solved,” said Hadamczik.
