A wave of change in Slovak hockey?

Much has been written and said in regards to the downfall of Slovak hockey over the past few years. Those who had not seen it before, had the chance to realise it first hand with the performance of the Slovak team at last years' Olympics in Sochi. Despite winning the silver medal at the 2012 World Championship in Helsinki and the bronze medal at this years' World Junior Championship and a number of comming up young players/prospects with the likes of Tomáš Tatar, Marko Daňo or Martin Réway, the outlook for the future of Slovak hockey is not the brightest. Of course, the Slovak Extraliga never quite reached the level of the national team or the top Slovak players in the NHL and in Europe even in its best years', he quality and even moreso the attendance have suffered after Slovan Bratislava left for the KHL. Even worse, the national team, once the flagship of Slovak hockey has gone from the disastrous World Championships of the years 2008-2011 and the catastrophic 2014 Olympics in Sochi. With such a tracrecord, the Slovak fans don't look forward to the World Championships as they once used to, and they are rather apprehensive or pessimistic in their expectations and they see relegation as a scenario, which is just as likely as Slovakia reaching the quarterfinals at the Worlds. After the 2014 Olympics fiasco, you'd be hard-pressed to  find a Slovak hockey fan, who doesn't harbour some kind of hard feelings against the leading men of the Slovak ice-hockey federation, namely its president Igor Nemeček and the general secretary/GM of the national team Oto Sýkora.

Soon their four years in office at the federation will pass as there will be new elections to the federation this June. For years fans have been waiting for some of the "golden boys"(as the generation of Slovak players mainly born in the 70s, who won Slovakia's only WC gold at the 2002 Worlds, as well as two further medals in 2000 and 2003 is refered to) to pick up the torch. While the name of long time national team captain Miroslav Šatan and Michal Handzuš, who has a reputation of being a bookworm and who is known to voice his opinions on public life in Slovakia were the favourites amongst the fans, the first impulse came from an unlikely source (although as it later turned out Šatan is also directly involved), namely Richard Lintner. The former deffenseman who has played 112 games in the NHL and who is probably most known in Slovakia for his role in gaining that WC gold (he was named to the All Stars team in that tournament), has developed some off-ice activities during the later stages of his European career. For years now, he has been a household name in the Slovak television during transmissions of World Championships' games. This season, while playing for his home team Dukla Trenčín in Slovak Extraliga, he also worked on the clubs' marketing, thinking of creative ways of inviting the fans to the games amongst other things, some of you might have seen this video featuring Marián Hossa.  In February of this year, Lintner has announced the finish of his playing career, claiming that he could no longer combine playing with his off-ice activities. Furthermore he told the media that he wants to help Slovak hockey. Over the next few weeks, he made several media appearances, where he confirmed this.

Last month we have learned the most news. It turned out that the whole things has been in the works for quite the time as the first meetings took place already prior to the 2012 World Championship in Helsinki. Since then a group formed around Lintner, which created a concept that aims to improve Slovak hockey. However as they only recently put the finishing touches on it, they are introducing it to the people directly involved in hockey in Slovakia and will reveal it to the public after this years' World Championships.

The things we already know? The 10 members of the group asides from Lintner are:

• fellow former national team players Miroslav Šatan, Peter Bondra and Rastislav Pavlikovský
• Oto Haščák, who is also a former national team player, as well as Ján Gajdošík, both European talent scouts for the New York Rangers
• Ján Filc, former coach of the u20 national team, as well as the men's national team, he is most known for winning the bronze with the u20 team, silver and gold with the men's team as well as coaching the Olympic team to 4th place in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He has however also coached the rather disastrous 2009 WC team (which for example lost a game to the Czechs by the score of 0:8) and he has already previously worked at the federation as a youth hockey expert under the presidency of Juraj Široký
• Andrej Miklánek - he held several positions at Slovak public broadcasting, including being the sports director of the Slovak television, he was later the programme director at the Slovak television and currently he works as a manager at the private television JOJ
• Peter Žifčák - the director of the Institute of Hockey Studies, an organisation, which built a few outdoor ball  hockey/hocke rinks and which organises the School Hockey and Ball Hockey league SHHL, now Tipsport hokejová prípravka, which gives the opportunity to kids from schools in Spiš region, Trenčín region, Banská  Bystrica region and Petržalka (Bratislava) to play ball hockey and hockey
• Rastislav Železník - is a lawyer. The reason for his inclusion is most probably that currently the Slovak parliament is in the process of creating a "sports law" (Zákon o športe), on which the major sports federations are co-working
• Vladimír Jacko - is the former president of one of Slovakia's best hockey teams, HC Košice

It  has also been announced that one of these 11 men would be the candidate for the president of the Slovak federations in the elections that will take place in June. We will learn the name after this years World Championship. Meanwhile, incumbent president Igor Nemeček has also announced that he will run for the position once again. Although as previously mentioned, we won't hear the concrete measure until after the WC, there are five key areas that Linter's team will focus on:

1.  The Slovak Extraliga - they want to improve the league and they want to start fom improving its image (as well as the image of Slovak hockey as a whole) and marketing, they see the Extraliga as the corner stone of Slovak hockey
2. The national team
3. Youth hockey - their aim is to improve the number of Slovak players drafted into the NHL, they say the first results are possible as early as in 3 years
4. Marketing and Finances - well these two are actually inherently connected, they wan to create a good product out of the Slovak Extraliga as well as Slovak hockey as a whole and improve its image in order to draw Slovak plrivate sector into investing money into the sport

Were the fans the ones to vote in these elections, the victor would already be clear. However, it's actually the clubs (3 votes for Extraliga clubs, 2 votes for I.liga clubs and 1 vote for II.liga as well as other teams) as well as people fom inside the federation (i.e. delegates from commissions of the federation). Thus Lintner and co. have a very hard journey ahead of them. They have already talked to many of the clubs individually, but when they invited all Extraliga teams and Slovan Bratislava to a meting, where they'd unveil their team and strategy in Košice recently, only 3 of the Extraliga teams showed up. Attempt no. 2 will come tomorrow as Lintner will attend a meeting of ProHokej (the organisation governing the Slovak Extraliga with the clubs neign its members) in Zvolen at a meeting organised by the local club Hkm Zvolen.