Turbulent summer for hockey in Slovakia

Of course, Marián Hossa has just returned home after winning his third Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks, but most of the attention is elsewhere. There are ten clubs competing in the Slovak Extraliga, yet only a handful of them are hitting the headlines with information about new incoming players. It has become somewhat of a tradition over the last few years that there are several Extraliga teams, whose fate for next season is uncertain during the summer months. Yet it was not an Extraliga club stealing the spotlight in the Slovak media over the last few weeks and months. The most focus lay with Slovan Bratislava and its future in the KHL as well as the elections of the president of SZLH (Slovak ice hockey federation), which will see the incumbent largely unpopular among fans Igor Nemeček face off with World Champion from Gothenburg 2002 Richard Lintner on the 25th of June.

Extraliga situation 

The struggles of Extraliga teams are not new and recur almost every year on a smaller or bigger scale. Prior to the 2012/2013 season for example only four clubs were granted the license for Extraliga (Košice, Banská Bystrica, Piešťany and Skalica) on the first go as the other teams had not fulfilled the conditions.Payment schedules to pay off debts towards players, coaches etc. were put in place and all the teams were allowed to participate in the 2012/2013 season. Like in a time loop the situation has been repeating itself every summer and this year is no exception. Currently three clubs stand in real danger of not playing the next season at all (Martin, Skalica and Piešťany), but the problems concern most teams. Generally it is believed that only Košice, Banská Bystrica and Trenčín don't have debts towards players from this season.

One of the clubs where the current situation is an old story is the club from Martin. The debt towards players who had not seen their pay for several months this season climbed up to more than 244,000 Euro. A further problem is the debt that the club has built during the time of its previous leadership. The future of the club should be decided on the 29^thof June when the general assembly of the club will meet. At the moment the whole situation turned into a small media war between two parties within the club – the current GM Martin Kalnický (who has also gained the public support of the players and coaches) and one of the shareholders of the club Michal Taliga.

Piešťany currently don't have a single player under contract, the reason is prosaic: they might not have anywhere to play, thus it would be irresponsible to contractually bind players according to the leadership of the club. The cooling of the ice rink in Piešťany, which is property of the town of Piešťany, needs repairs and at this point it remains unknown whether the repairs will take place in time. Piešťany originally received a 1 million Euro grant from the reserves of Slovakia's prime minister. This money was intended for building a training rink in the town, which would serve as a training center for the country's national u18 and u20 team. Piešťany wanted to connect this project with the repairs of the main rink, however as they have been unable to build the training rink the grant was moved to the town of Senec, which showed willingness to invest its own resources into the project in addition to the 1 million provided by the prime minister's reserves. Just last week the president of PiešťanyLušňák announced that Piešťany wouldn't host the prestigious u18 international tournament Ivan Hlinka Memorial this year as there is no guarantee that there will be ice in Piestany by the 1st of August.

Long removed from the days when they were competing to win the Extraliga trophy under the leadership of Žigmund Pálffy, another club which was hit by this year's wave of trouble is the club from small Western Slovak town of Skalica. Its players had not seen their pay for several months during last season. A few months back the club asked for a bigger grant for their youth teams from the town of Skalica, which the town denied. As a result the youth teams were separated from the men's team and a new NGO - a youth club under the direct control of the town of Skalica and with Žigmund Pálffy as the honorary president was created. The split was caused due to the lack of transparency when it came to handling finances by the club of HK 36 Skalica. The men's team has canceled the summer preparation for next season and needs to find 600,000 Euro to fill its budget for next season if they want to play in the Extraliga. The representatives of the club have already conceded that they have also thought about the alternatives, which would see the men's team play in I. liga or II.liga. However the possibility that there will be no men's team in the town remains. Getting the needed financial support might not only show to be hard, because of the aforementioned lack of transparency, but also because despite being a town of only 15,000 citizens the local football team has recently also been promoted to the country's top football league, Fortuna liga.

The promotion of the football team from Skalica is an interesting one as the club was promoted despite being only the runner-up in the second best national football competition. This was caused by the fact that the football team from Košice was relegated from Fortuna liga after not fulfilling the criteria for next season. Many of the football clubs in Slovakia fight similar battles as the hockey clubs and it was three players who did not agree with the payment schedule for Košice paying off their debts towards them that caused Košice's demise. This is an unprecedented step in Slovak sports and one has to wonder whether we might not see a similar situation facing one of the hockey clubs in Extraliga as well somewhere down the line.

The fate of Slovan

Although playing in a superior competition to the Slovak Extraliga, in the KHL, Slovan Bratislava didn't avoid the same woes as the Extraliga clubs, not only building a debt towards players who didn't see their pay for several months, but also a debt towards the city Bratislava for not paying the rent for the Ondrej Nepela ice-rink. For long months Slovak media were filled with speculation on where Slovan would play the next season. Their efforts to play in EBEL or the Czech Extraliga were among other things halted by the fact that the Slovak federation wouldn't grant their departure to said leagues, thus leaving only two viable options for Slovan: The KHL or Slovak Extraliga. Although after all the speculation most people were convinced that Slovan would unceremoniously return to the Slovak league, just last week information about Slovan continuing in the KHL resurfaced and by this point it would be surprising to see the club from the capital play elsewhere.

Slovan has long had the reputation as perhaps the most hated club in the country among fans of other clubs, even back in its Slovak Extraliga days Slovan was the club that people just loved to hate. The hate has however taken on a whole new level with the media racket about its KHL future. What has added even more into the fire was the person of the club's owner Juraj Široký. The businessman (many would say oligarch) Široký, formerly also the president of the Slovak ice hockey federation and linked to the Czechoslovak communist secret police ŠtB, who is recently most infamous in Slovakia for the scandal Váhostav. Váhostav owes hundreds of millions of euros to plenty of small and medium-sized companies.While the ownership of Váhostav continues beyond Slovakia to countries like Cyprus or Costa Rica, according to Transparency International Slovakia there are three Slovak companies behind Váhostav, which are linked to Široký. Furthermore when the Slovak prime minister Róbert Fico visited Russia this month, he also spoke with Vladimir Putin about saving Slovan Bratislava in the KHL. Considering that Široký is generally perceived to be linked to Fico as one of the main sponsors of his party by the public in Slovakia and the situationin the Extraliga clubs this was also a thorn in the eyes of many Slovak hockey fans.

A new hope?

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