Cracovia backs on the throne

Last Sunday Cracovia Krakow won last game in the Final Series against GKS Tychy and is crowned Polish Champion after one year break.

In previous season Cracovia also was a great favorite, but lost final series with Podhale Nowy Targ 1-4 without fight (one win thanks to bonus rule). This time Cracovia was definitely the best team during whole season, and stayed it during play-offs.
Before final they won in first round 4-0 with Zagłębie Sosnowiec, 4-1 against Jastrzębie in semifinal. Both defeats occurred in Penalty Shoot-out. At all Cracovia didn't lose any game in regular time since December.

Cracovia had the strongest roster with best goalie of regular season and play-off Rafał Radziszewski, very good defenders like Patryk Noworyta, Patryk Wajda and Patrik Prokop, and primary great strong forward lines with brothers Leszek and Daniel Laszkiewicz, Damian Słaboń, Grzegorz Pasiut and Michał Piotrowski,Czech Petr Dvorak and two Polish-Canadian players David Kostuch and Rafał Martynowski.
Also head coach, Rudolf Rohacek, had a great contibution in the success.
He won his fourth title with Cracovia.
Other thing, which made Cracovia a champion was very good financial situation and professional management.

GKS Tychy with former NHL-er Roman Simicek, and some Polish veterans (Adrian Parzyszek, Sebastian Gonera and Marian Csorich) and some other solid players (Michał Kotlorz, Arkadiusz Sobecki, Josef Vitek and Tomas Jakes ) wasn't capable of competing with Cracovia.due to not high level management and a short bench. They lost three past four final games very clearly (1-8, 3-7 and 0-4), and won just one at shoot-out.
Maybe next season this club will be in better situation after city authorities will help GKS with theirs issues (financial mainly).

Management and money was and still are the biggest problems in Polish League.
Former Champion, Wojas Podhale Nowy Targ bankrupted during the summer and didn't participate to league this season, replaced by MMKS Podhale Nowy Targ, which had to win qualification tournament played in August.

MMKS Podhale was a team with some older club's alumns (Marcin Kolusz, Tomasz Rajski, Jarosław Różańki, Rafał Dutka, Sebastian Łabuz), youth players from MMKS (Damian Kapica, Kacper Bryniczka and others) and some foreigners - Canadian Kelly Czuy (until end of January) and Czechs Milan Baranyk and Frantisek Bakrlik (since October/Novenber).

Money issues was serious problem for some others clubs - Naprzód Janów, Zagłębie Sosnowiec, and Stoczniowiec Gdańsk: Naprzód after won 5 of 36 games in regular season, lost Play-out series with KTH Krynica and finally was relegated to 1. Liga and now future of club was very uncertain

KTH Krynica also had some minor financial problems, and moreover had two excelent foreigners - Karel Horny and Milan Ovsak. Ovsak was best scoring defencemen in PLH.

Naprzód will be replaced by Nesta Toruń, which won 1. Liga after 40 victories in a row. KTH afer win play-out series will play-off for last place in PLH with 2nd team from 1.Liga - GKS Katowice.

Zagłębie Sosnowiec advanced to play-offs but lost against Cracovia with goals 3-25 after three matches (two of these games Zagłębie played at home ice). Zagłębie and Naprzód during season lost almost all of theirs best players and had to play with some new, but, due to financial arrears most of them wasn't approved to play by PZHL's Games Department. It mean that many games of these two teams was forfeited to rivals.

Stoczniowiec, thanks to very good alumns, which hadn't  left the team yet (goalie Odrobny, forward Chmielewski) or even back to team (Drzewiecki) played quite good at regular and play-off, but finally will play for 7th place against Zagłębie.

Teams from laces 2-5 after regular had stable situation and one of them had to be great loser. This team is KH Sanok, composed of many players and head coach from Wojas Podhale  (Zapała, Malasiński, Ivicic, Suur, Gruszka, Dziubiński and coach Jancuska), some theirs players
from last season (Mermer, Milan, Rąpała, Vozdecky) and from relegated  TKH Toruń (Kubat and Plaskiewicz).
Sanok won Polish Cup in late December but in first round of play-off was defeated by JKH Jastrzębie.
JKH was leading by former super-scored from Czech Extraliga Richard Kral  (which was best scorer of regular season with 67 points in 35 games), and some very solid Polish and Czech players: Lipina, Urbanowicz, Dąbkowski, Danieluk, Rimmel and goalie Kosowski.

Jastrzębie and other semifinal loser, Unia Oświęcim (with two great forwards: Czech Lukas Riha and Slovak Robert Krajci) are competing for Bronze Medal, and now this series is tied 1-1.

Unfortunatelly during this season play-offs Polish Federation maintained very bad idea with bonus system. It means, that all teams in pairs, which was higher in table after regular needed to win the series one game less than other team. This rule forced only in main tree, quarterfinals, semifinals, final and also in play-out.

Other strange think: we had Polish Champion but we didn't  finished play-offs, many placement games had to be played (for 3rd, 5th and 7th places).

Polish season is almost end, and we hope next will be much better then current; clubs will be better managed and won't have financial problems and PZHL will made  normal rules without all of these strange solutions.

 

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