– It’s a damn great thing that they got up.
Ice hockey pilot, ex-ice hockey player, born in 1980 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland Tomek Valtonen was on the spot in Nottingham at the turn of April-May 2023, watching the 1A division, i.e. the league level below the main level, where the Polish national ice hockey team played.
Valtonen was not actually following the games of his native country, but observing the players of the club team he coached at the time, the Italian HC Pustertal-Val Pusteria, who represented Italy.
Italy bounces back almost every time they play in the first division. In 2023, that didn’t happen, but the two top spots were taken by Great Britain and Poland.
Valtonen was Poland’s head coach in the 2018−19 season, when the country played in the 1B division, i.e. on the lower rung of the first division. He piloted the national team in the Olympic qualifiers the following season. Those who worked as a stand coach and consultant, who ended their careers as a hockey coach this spring, helped Risto Dufva and goalkeeper coach Tommi Satosaariwho trained goalkeepers in KooKoo last season.
Valtonen’s contract was a model of 2+2 years, but the project was left unfinished when the Polish Ice Hockey Association, which at that time was in debt of four million euros, did not pay salaries or bonuses on time to the players and, for that matter, to the coaches. As many as 16 of the Polish national team players refused Valtonen’s invitation due to the union’s payment problems.
– Now the players smelled that it was the last seam. The team is really old, and they now had the last chance to move up to the A-series because of the war started by Russia. The players came back (to the national team) and hit all-in, Valtonen says, and continues that he was impressed by the players’ tenacious fighting mentality.
The exclusion of Russia and Belarus from the main level games has in a way opened up two new tournament places for the countries that are trying from the division, and Poland seized this opportunity, even though the underlying reason – Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine – is an infinitely unfortunate enabler. It’s still not Poland’s fault.
A decisive victory
The rise was in Poland’s own hands, when in the last match of the first division, Romania was the clear underdog. With a win, a place in the main league would be certain.
Zoltán László Tőke blocked all 11 of the Poles’ attempts in the opening set, while one of the Romanians’ two attempts went in. The losing position after 20 minutes of the game could already give a little reason to tremble.
However, things took a turn for the worse when the goal taps opened in the second set. Poland stormed into a safe lead by banging four cages into another player in their twenties, and they didn’t let up in the final set either. Poland earned its return ticket.
In addition to being the head coach of Poland a few years ago, Valtonen was also the head coach of Podhale Nowy Targ. Satosaari, who was a cashier in Valtonen’s national team coaching popup, also trained cashiers in the club team GKS Katowice, whose head coach was Dufva.
– Katowice is a hockey center, but the capital Warsaw is practically not a hockey area at all. I’m sure no one there knows (Poland’s promotion to the main league), says Satosaari.
Dufva, who has coached Vaasan Sport for the past few years, sees the same.
– There are no teams in Warsaw at all and the hall situation is bad there. The lack of the capital region is big.
It is amazing that it has come to this point, because the first circles of Polish ice hockey were drawn on the ice precisely at the initiative of four Varsity hockey clubs, when they founded the Polish Union in 1925. The country became a member of the international union in 1926.
Everything is possible
According to Satosaari, there is a strong desire to develop hockey in Poland, and the country has potential as a sports country with a population of almost 40 million.
Valtonen hopes that the rise would give Poland more impetus. However, he is skeptical, adding that he thinks that Poland will fall back to the division level if Russia and Belarus ever return to the main league.
Unless the operation develops and Poland starts doing the right things. According to Valtonen, the Polish Ice Hockey Federation and the Club Teams do not get along. The whole is not uniform, unlike in Finland, where the conditions are fine.
Risto Dufva’s words say a lot.
– I didn’t like it, I left there myself. That was the way of management. There was no problem with the team and the players were fine, but at least I was in the wrong place there.
Dufva is of the opinion that Poland’s rise is a refreshing thing for international hockey, which had long been used to Kazakhstan, Slovenia, Italy and Austria alternating between the main league and the first division. Great Britain, South Korea and Hungary have been able to break the pattern at times.
Time will tell if Poland will become an elite team like the previously mentioned countries, or if the current Slovakian coach can do it by Robert Kalaber the group playing under to establish their place on the top league ladder.
It is up to Poland itself.
– There are enough resources, but it would be worthwhile to think about where to allocate them. It was a rush that looked like the 70s, Dufva states, compared to the development of Suomi-kieko.
Just politics
It is no coincidence that when Dufva left for Poland in 2018, the past from decades ago was waiting for him.
Polish hockey has stagnated, and the reasons can be found in history.
– It’s always funny when someone says that sports and politics don’t belong together. In these old communist countries it is I’ve coached in Slovakia and Poland, and it’s just politics, Tomek Valtonen justifies.
He continues that ice hockey was even the second sport in Poland, right after football, until the Iron Curtain tore.
– When the whole system broke down, there were no agents in the puddle. Volleyball, basketball, speedway, athletics passed and of course futis. The puddle stayed afloat.
Poland hosted its only Ice Hockey World Cup home games at the main level in 1976 in Katowice. The country had been fifth in the three previous games, and although the ranking was seventh in Katowice, Poland achieved the biggest achievement in its entire puck history right on its home ice. It beat the Soviet Union 6−4.
After that tournament, the red and whites continued their games in the B series, and visits to the A series were rare. Since then, Poland has played at the highest level only four times, the most recent of which was in Sweden in 2002. The group included Ukraine, Finland and Slovakia, which won its first gold. Poland lost to Finland 0−8 Timo Pärsisnen doing a hat trick.
Bad luck
Poland returned to the second level, although they beat Italy and Japan in the relegation group. However, the quota place in Asia prevented Japan’s relegation, so Poland was destined to leave the main series, and that’s the way it stayed.
Why was Poland left in the worst division?
– The level of coaching is really weak, but it’s not the coaches’ fault, but that they are not trained. The money from the race venue must be used wisely, Valtonen insists.
According to Tommi Satosaari, Poland would have the conditions to be a better quality puck country than it is today.
– The fan base is in good shape. In certain places, the halls are full, and then (2018−19) you could see the budding rise of hockey.
Satosaari estimates that in the main series, Poland will be able to score some points now and then, but the big ones are too big. The team of one of the main opponents can even be defeated in a death match.
Risto Dufva has also been consulting the Slovenian national team, and he knows that Poland still has a lot to do.
– The difference in tactical skills is big (compared to big countries). It is not enough to build a defensive wall when you have to be able to attack, and it should be based on more than just individual skill.
Valtonen is happy that Poland’s upward performance came under its own power. The team had only one naturalized foreigner, while Italy and Great Britain, who played against Poland in the 1A division, had considerably more of them.
He was the only foreign player John Murraya 33-year-old goalkeeper of American background who has played in Poland for a long time and has a Polish wife, Satosaari knows how to tell.
25 men from where?
In the case of Poland, we are forced to come to the same question. If there are barely a couple of credible goalkeepers in the country when the competition group is selected, where are you going to find a Pole capable of playing at the 25th World Cup level?
– At the moment, not a single player’s level would be sufficient for the Finnish league. There are not enough top roles, and the Finnish players in the third and fourth chain are better, Valtonen admits.
Dufva mentions that if the key players for example Grzegorz Pasiut, Patryk Wronka and Krystian Dziubiński had entered the Finnish system early, they could have developed into league-level players.
The same names ring out in Satosaari’s speech. However, these gamblers are already getting old.
Captain Marcin Kolusz would like to be coached by Dufva in Sport in the 2020−2021 season. He played nine games in Vaasa and scored two assists.
– Kolusz is an exception in the sense that he was a striker, and I made him a pack. Risto (Dufva) saw how good he is in the national team. He got a chance, Valtonen says.
Polish site hockey.net it was rumored that forward Wronka would move to Mesti in 2016, but it never materialized. Abroad and also in the Polish main league, the salary level is higher than in the second level in Finland.
It is easier for the players to stay and enjoy their professional status in Poland, instead of developing themselves at an early stage in foreign leagues. Valtonen also adds to Poland’s problems that there are too many foreigners in the country’s top league, and they are paid too much. Even if foreigners are a good challenge for Poles, playing time is taken away from others and resources are misdirected when there are no quotas for foreigners.
By investing in coaching, the junior side and the conditions, even a smaller hockey country has a chance to succeed. Both Tomek Valtonen and Risto Dufva state that junior work has been neglected in Poland. Poland is a refreshing novelty, but is it just catching up or here to stay?
– Promotion creates faith, but it doesn’t help that you play for one year and lose all the games and it’s a good shot. We have to invest at the grassroots level, Valtonen concludes.
Viaplay has the TV rights for the World Cup in Finland, but MTV also shows Finland’s matches, semi-finals and the final. does not have broadcast rights, but the games are followed closely in the app, Urheilu’s website, Urheiluruutu and Urheiluradio.