@SEPH I'm always curious what the Polish National Teams (mens/womens) at every level are up to. I try to follow along as best I can but you do a very good job at laying out the big picture. It feels like for the past year and a bit the Polish national teams have just barely missed out on promotion. In fact the Polish women's team was close to making it to the 2018 Olympics. They would have been smoked but still would have been neat to see.
Yeah Women's hockey is still very top heavy with Canada and USA exchanging Gold Medals every year. I actually didn't even know they had a women's hockey team, which is awesome because Polish women are some of the best in Europe IMO.
If I remember off the top of my head, doesn't Japan have a pretty solid female team? Not one who can challenge North America, but one that can beat the likes of Suisse and Sweden for example?
I couldn't watch any of the games due to a busy schedule, but it sounds like Poland blew this more than Hungary winning it. I do think Hungary is a couple steps above us in terms of development and talent, but I've been pretty much proud of what Poland has been able to accomplish the last couple of years. These results though have been the work of development from the last seven to eight years. They just finally decided to explode in the last couple of IIHF events with the addition of Lyszczarczyk coming on the scene as well.
One person who is HUGE in not only Poland's Hockey Association, but throughout the media is Mariusz Czerkawski. He has simply done wonders in exposing hockey to the public view. He's also a quite popular figure on the public good morning shows where he normally makes appearances once every few months. Now...is hockey going to take some spotlight away from volleyball (which we're sadly very good at) and football? No it won't, though it's slowly, but surely growing. The Polski Hockey Association created a couple years ago a hockey school like Slovakia has with their U20 Orange Team. It's meant to develop and play against men, but more importantly, develop chemistry for the players once they reach the higher leagues. I keep repeating myself, but one of the ways to grow hockey is to have the respective country's national team to do very well. We've seen this with Suisse, Latvia, sometimes with Denmark, and now with Hungary.
One other player to watch for to help the national team is Bartlomiej Jeziorski. Posting up some good numbers as an 18 year old against men, but seems he's stuck in a league which doesn't get scouted a whole lot. Would like to see him come over the ocean to the NAHL or USHL to see what he can do because it does look like he has some legitimate talent.
Here:
http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=280005
Logan Brown and Alex DeBrincat cut LOL
LOL, USAH is going to USAH. Who made the team over them? Random Florida Panthers 6th rounders?
Why need some actual talent when you have Troy Terry and Joe Cecconi leading the way?
