The White Tigers take the lead

With almost every team having played by now 24 games, the highest tier of Czech ice hockey is now entering its "clou" phase. Sparta Praha, which remained on top of the classification table for weeks, had to cede the highest position to Bílí Tygri Liberec. The White Tigers won today's match-up against Zlín, the second-last team at the moment, pretty easily: the final score was, indeed, 5-1 for the home club based in northern Bohemia. The temporary silver medal is now in the hands of Skoda Plzen, which won against Trinec 3-2 just at the shootout.  

Sparta convinced as well against Pardubice having obtained a 3-0 win, and is now third, with the same amount of points as Mláda Boleslav which, on its part, obtained an incredible shootout win against Plzen last Friday, with a final score of 7-6. A team which should seriously be worried, though, is VERVA Litvínov, which lost five out of its seven games this months and has now just 20 classification points (compared to the 48 points currently held by Liberec): a really troubled situation for the team which just last season won the championship. The last game, lost 4-1 to Karlovy Vary, proved itself to be pretty important for the latter, which can now breathe some fresh air after having been for weeks at the bottom of the league. Also, Chomutov won 4-2 against Mountfield HK and is now at the fifth place of the table, while Vítkovice Steel was pretty convincing in putting down Olomouc (which is still, anyways, placed sixth) with four goals to none.

In the WSM Liga, Dukla Jihlava is still the best team with 59 classification points and a streak of ten consecutive wins, followed by Kladno (54), Slavia Prague (49) and Ceské Budejovice (48). Sumperk and Most, with 24 and 22 classification points respectively, are seriously in danger of being relegated to the 2. Liga.

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