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Hopeful Poland wants to stick around
(HTM) Source
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Hockey fever is coming back to Poland. Once a familiar sight in the
top division of the IIHF World Championship, the White Eagles are
soaring once again after back-to-back promotions delivered a place
among the elite.
Under the guidance of Slovak head coach Robert Kalaber, the Poles won
Division IB on home ice in 2022, then grabbed promotion from Division
IA a year later, beating Italy - Mike Keenan and all - to second place
in the group.
That ended a 22-year absence from the top table and the excitement has
been building ever since.
Team captain Krystian Dziubinski has been part of that journey
throughout. Now 35, the Unia Oswiecim forward has seen a surge of
interest in the game this season.
"People are paying more attention" he said. "Some sponsors came to the
[Polish Ice Hockey] Federation.
"Even in just one year, it's looking better. but we need to stay there
for one more year, then one more year. That would give our younger
players a chance to play in stronger leagues."
Even a year ago, head coach Kalaber was hoping to see precisely these
opportunities.
"We have some young players who are really good," he said after
winning promotion in Nottingham last May. "They should be in better
leagues. This tournament is a chance for them to go to bigger clubs
and develop as young players at a higher level."
At present, Poland has three players in the Czech league: Litvinov's
24-year-old forward Pavel Zygmunt, experienced Aron Chmielevski, a
Czech champion in recent seasons with Ocelari Trinec but recovering
from an injury-hit season that limited him to 13 games this term, and
22-year-old Kamil Walega, a stand-out on the promotion-winning roster
who earned a move to Trinec this season.
Goalie John Murray, American born but a stalwart of Polish hockey for
10 years, is certainly seeing changes.
"I believe they said that crowds [in the Polish championship] were up
30% on last year as a ballpark figure," he said. "We've had a little
bit more media coverage than prior as well, but we could still do
more. When I first went to Poland 10 years ago, the league wasn't as
good as it is now, but we did have more TV coverage."
He's coming off a busy season - his GKS Katowice team made the
national finals, losing to Dziubinski's Unia - and admitted that the
warm-up games had been a struggle. The last five games have brought
defeats against Slovenia (twice), Great Britain (twice) and Slovakia,
with just four goals scored in that time.
"We can't say we're playing too spectacular," he said. "But we're
ambitious. We're just waiting for that spark to come. Right now, it's
about the process, not the results."
The final preparation game takes place against Denmark in Sosnowiec on
Tuesday, then it's time for the real work to start. Poland plays its
first elite pool game for 22 years on Saturday against Latvia.
Expectations are modest, but there's genuine hope that, like Austria
in 2019, this could be the start of a longer stay.
"We're pretty realistic," said Murray. "We want to do enough to be
able to maintain. We know we need to come up with points with
Kazakhstan and/or France. Maybe a few points here or there from
another team."
Dziubinski is also focused on survival. "We're trying to catch up," he
said. "We know that we're not going to get it perfect in every game
but we know where we can create chances and we'll go from there."
And with Poland playing in Ostrava, barely an hour's drive from the
country's hockey heartlands in Silesia and Malopolskie, he's expecting
some enthusiastic support to lift the team.
"It's going to be full of Polish fans," he smiled. "It's going to be
wild and I think that's going to help us. That crowd will be really
loud for us and it's going to help us get points."
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