BUDAPEST – The two favourites for promotion opened the 2011 IIHF World Championship Division I Group A successfully. Host Hungary defeated the Netherlands 7-3. Italy dominated Division I rookie Spain as well, although the 2-0 score didn't reflect the superiority of the Azzurri.
Netherlands vs. Hungary 3-7 (0-4, 2-1, 1-2) Game Sheet Photos
Host Hungary had a successful opening game against the Netherlands in front of an atmospheric home crowd of 7,961 in Budapest. A 4-0 lead in the first period set the stage for a 7-3 win.
Ladislav Sikorcin opened the scoring at 13:53 after there were opportunities at both ends to start the game. Csaba Kovacs got the puck at the boards and passed to Krisztian Palkovics, who skated towards Groeneveld, but just hit the goalkeeper's pads. Sikorcin, the Slovak-born forward who was naturalized recently, was in the right place to score on the rebound.
Nobody expected at this point that the Magyars would overrun their opponents in orange in the next few minutes with stunning offensive action and efficiency.
A little more than two minutes later, the Hungarian fans in the sold-out Laszlo Papp Sportarena were celebrating a second goal. Hungary had its first power play and Marton Vas capitalized on it with a shot from the blueline.
Seventy-seven seconds later, another Hungarian attack ended with a marker. Groeneveld missed a puck when Kovacs seemed to pass to the other side and the puck slid toward the inner post, then going over the goal line.
Less than a minute later, the Hungarians were again all smiles. Balazs Ladanyi attempted a shot from the right side that hit Groeneveld's body, and Istvan Sofron was at the right place to score on the rebound.
So the Hungarians only took four minutes and 19 seconds in the first period to decide the game. The rest was quite entertaining, providing the icing on the cake for the fans as the teams exchanged a couple of more goals.
“We started well and made it pretty hard for them, but then they punished us when we had some bad minutes,” Netherlands head coach Tommie Hartogs said afterwards.
The Hungarian scoring machine slowed down a bit in the second period. But with the hosts' second power play of the period, Sofron got his second goal of the night.
At 11:07 the Dutch finally got on the scoreboard. Diederick Hagemeijer made a nice solo effort on the power play, skating around the Hungarian cage before beating Zoltan Hetenyi with a high shot. A minute later Casey van Schagen, after receiving a cross-ice pass at the blueline, scored the 5-2 goal on a breakaway.
The Hungarians learned their lesson and started to become more careful in their defensive zone. In the third perio, the score became even more lopsided thanks to the Vas brothers. Marton Vas fired home a shot for the sixth Hungarian goal after four minutes, and Janos made it 7-2 with four minutes left to play.
The last marker went to the Netherlands, as a goal from Ivy van den Heuvel rounded out the 7-3 final score.
“We were sloppy in the beginning, but then everything went the right way,” Ladanyi said. “I hope we will keep our tempo from this game.”
Spain vs. Italy 0-2 (0-0, 0-1, 0-1) Game Sheet Photos
Italy opens its IIHF World Championship Division I campaign with a 2-0 win against Spain, which played its first-ever game at this level.
The Spaniards tried their best in their premiere, but it wasn't enough against a more skilled, but inefficient Italian squad.
The biggest Southern European nations, Italy and Spain, might share a long history of rivalry in some sports, most notably football, but in hockey they haven't met that often. Their encounter on Sunday took place because Italy was relegated to Division I one year ago, while Spain earned its first-ever promotion to the Division I level.
However, the first game between these two nations dates back to 1926, when their first clash in the IIHF European Championship ended in a 2-2 tie. They met again in the IIHF World Championship C Pool in the '70s. In 1977, in Copenhagen, Italy won 12-0 and earned the promotion to the B-Pool, but they were back down in 1979 in Barcelona where they defeated Spain on enemy ice, 10-1.
Some of the players from those days have sons playing on the Italian and Spanish national teams this year, including IIHF Council Member Frank Gonzalez.
And now the teams met again after more than 30 years, here in Budapest.
Italy, a regular top-division participant, was the odds-on favourite, but Spain competed without too much awe. Bastien Ribot-Tona even had the first big chance of the game with a breakaway at 2:22, and one minute later Spain had the first of its three power plays in the first period.
"The game was much more difficult than many of us expected," Italian defenceman Armin Helfer said. "Some thought everything would settle automatically, but it didn't.“
However, Spain wasn't able to create much offensive action against the experienced Italian defence, with only four shots on goal after 20 minutes for the red-and-yellow squad, and 16 by the Italians. Italy outshot the Spaniards 60-8 after three periods.
The Italian scoring drought eventually ended in the second period when the Spaniards started running into penalty trouble. At 9:05 Italy got on the scoreboard for the first time with its second man advantage. The Spaniards tried to push the Italians away from their zone, but Matt de Marchi created a fast counter-attack before passing to Patrick Iannone, who defeated Ander Alcaine the first time.
At 9:53 of the third period Italy capitalized on another power play. Defenceman Armin Helfer skated towards the offensive zone and shot the puck past Alcaine from the blueline.
The tight 2-0 score remained until the final buzzer, although Italy was never in danger of losing this game in the last minutes. It was a score far closer than the ones in the '70s, but for the Italians only the three points count. It was also nice to have defended their supremacy in Southern Europe.
The fans and players at the arena held a minute’s silence before each game for the victims of the natural disaster in Japan that prevented its national team from participating in this event. A minute’s silence was held during the tournament directorate meeting as well.
MARTIN MERK
