2011 Ice Hockey World Championship in Slovakia

Ice Hockey belongs to one of the most popular sports in Slovakia. Many towns has their Ice hockey teams. The most famous are Slovan Bratislava, HC Kosice, Dukla Trencin, HKM Zvolen, HK Poprad, HK Nitra which have a huge fan base.

The highest-level Ice Hockey league in Slovakia is called Slovak Extraliga (Slovak Extraleague), which is played by 12 hockey teams. First 8 teams plays the final play-off.

Every team and many Slovakians are waiting for the biggest challenge - IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

Slovak National Ice Hockey team is quite young. Team was established in 1993 after dividing Czechoslovakia to Czcech Republic and Slovak Republic. Event it is young country, already it has some top hits.

Slovak National Teams was introduced in 1994 on Olympics in Lillehammer where Slovak National Team finished on the 7th place. After establishment Slovak national team must get out from IIHF World Championship Division I group B to the top world hockey elite - IIHF World Championship. Slovak Team masterful won every match and got in the top Ice Hockey elite in two years. National team of Slovakia was firstly introduced in IIHF World Championship in 1996 in Vienna. Due to Vienna’s location few miles from Slovakia (Bratislava), many fans were supporting them, but Slovak national team didn’t reach a huge success - only 10th place.

The first IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship medal reached by Slovak team was silver medal in Russia’s Saint Perersburg in 2000. Many Slovak towns were organising huge celebrations of this success. After two years Slovakia won its first ever world hockey championship downing Russia 4-3 in Sweden’s Goeteborg. The final gol shots Peter Bondra - Washington Capitals’s player.

Players

Slovakia brought up to world many successful players. Many of them got the top players in oversea’s National Hockey League. The top ice hockey players of Czechoslovakian Ice Hockey was Jozef Golonka, Vladimir Dzurilla, Darius Rusnak. They won with Czcechoslovakian national team some of the top world challenges like Ice Hockey World Championship and Olympics.

Slovak brothers Stastny - Anton Stastny, Marian Stastny and Peter Stastny was one of the most famouse NHL players. Peter Stastny was ranked number 56 on The Hockey News’ list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players.

Many Slovakians players are drafted to NHL every year . Nowadays famouse active oversea’s Slovak players are Miroslav Satan, Marian Gaborik, Richard Zednik, Pavol Demitra, Hossa brothers Marian and Marcel, Michal Handzus, Vladimir Orszagh and many others.

Slovakian Ice Hockey has bright history with many successes, many world famous players, good location in the centre of Europe. That’s because Slovakia is the best country to stage 2011 Ice Hockey World Championship.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Slovakia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.