Kari Jalonen will not coach the Czech national team towards the World Cup home games.
Kari Jalonen, 62, has been given the boot as head coach of the Czech men’s national ice hockey team. The rest of the coaching team has also been fired.
The Czech media reports on the matter, such as Sport.czaccording to which the position of head coach of the A national team will be taken by the last captain of the Czech U20 national team Radim Rulik.
Jalonen started in the Czech national team in March 2022. He piloted the Czech national team to bronze in the 2022 World Championships, but in this year’s games the team missed the quarterfinals.
After that, Jalonen received a lot of criticism from the Czech federation, because next spring the Czech Republic will host the World Cup.
The committee of the Czech Ice Hockey Federation finally decided on Jalonen’s dismissal by a vote of 9–2. Jalose had a contract valid until spring 2024.
Jalonen’s firing is not a huge surprise. For example Denikn reports on Wednesday that the management of the Czech Ice Hockey Federation will meet on Thursday to decide on Jalonen’s continuation. Already at that time, unofficial information said that Rulik would replace the Finnish pilot.
President of the Czech Ice Hockey Federation Alois Hadamczik shared rude messages in Jalonen’s direction at the press conference.
– Personally, I had already made my decision after the World Cup. If this didn’t have to be a collective decision, the decision would have been made much earlier, Hadamczik commented on Jalonen’s firing.
Jalonen’s situation was discussed in the Czech Hockey Association on June 8. That’s when the Czech federation decided that you and Jalonen will hold together the national team’s GM by Martin Havlat with to create a strategy with which the national team will return to success in the World Cup home games next spring.
– The Ice Hockey Federation’s committee wanted to take a very responsible approach to the next event, the WC home games. The board was dissatisfied with Kari Jalonen’s written report on continuing his work and managing the team. Not a single voter on the board said that Jalonen’s report would have convinced them to vote differently, Hadamczik commented now.
The Czech Ice Hockey Federation said that the entire U20 national team team will be promoted to the A national team. So Rulik can help by Marek Zidlicky, Jiri Kalousin and By Ondrej Pavelec. Petr Nedved returns as the team’s GM.
Worked as GM in Jalonen’s team Martin Havlat continues with Nedved’s help. According to the Czech media, Havlat, who played almost 800 NHL games in his career, had received criticism for his ability to communicate, for example, in the direction of possible NHL reinforcements.
Kari Jalo has been glimpsed like that in the Czech media as, for example, Urheilu’s experts say as one possibility Jukka Jalonen as a substitute. Jukka Jalonen will leave Leijonat after spring 2024.
Kari Jalonen has won the championship gold four times as a head coach, three of them in Kärpi and the most recent in 2011 in HIFK.
Kari Jalonen has coached the Finnish A national team 2014–2016. In 2016, Leijonat won the World Cup silver.
After that, Jalonen piloted SC Bern in the Swiss league from 2016 to 2020, winning two Swiss championships.
He was selected for the Czech national team in March 2022, when the Beijing Olympics had gone poorly for the Czech Republic. At the Olympics, the Czech Republic did not even reach the quarter-finals, after which Filip Pesan got a shoe.