EP Austria back online

As from today EP Austria is back online to provide you the hottest news on the EBEL, other Austrian leagues and hockey in Slovenia. So check out our channel at twitter.com!

Link: EP Austria@twitter.com

Two EBEL players available for KHL draft

The Russian KHL is going to hold its first draft on June 1st. The 24 teams are going to choose overall 96 players in four rounds. For these purposes, the league published a list of 749 players in the age of 17 to 21 (Russian citizens: 17-20), who are available for the draft. The list includes two players from the EBEL: Székesfehérvár’s backup goalie Zoltán Hetényi and his fellow-countryman Dániel Koger from EC Salzburg.

Fifth Austrian to join a Swedish team

As reported by EP Austria, goalkeeper Jürgen Penker has signed for another year with Elitserien’s Rögle BK. With Penker and Thomas Raffl, who already signed a two-year-contract with Luleå Hockey in February, two Austrians are therefore going to compete in the Elitserien in 09/10.
However, two other Austrians will be playing in the second-tier Allsvenskan: The Sweden-born defender Victor Lindgren is going to join Örebro on a try-out basis. He will be practising with the Allsvenskan newcomer in August, seeking a one-year-contract. In Örebro, he is going to be the teammate of Austrian national team defender Mario Altmann, who appeared in three games during the recent world championship in Switzerland. The 22-year-old defender had already signed a contract with Villacher SV for the season 09/10, but - as EP Austria reported - the transfer from Vienna to Villach was stalled due to the Vienna Capitals’ demand of an excessive apprenticeship payment. Due to this, Altmann has now signed for one season with Örebro Hockey.
The fifth Austrian playing in Sweden in the next season is junior Konstantin Komarek, who represents Luleå’s U18 team and hopes for regular call-ups to the club’s U20 team as well. Furthermore, another highly talented junior player from Austria may be on his way to the junior programme of a Swedish club. EP Austria established contact between the player and two prestigious teams from northern Sweden. We hope to be able to come back with good news on this topic soon.

Further departures at Jesenice?

The exodus of players at Jesenice has seemingly not come to an end yet. Aleš Kranjc, the club’s best defender, has left HK Jesenice for Vienna Capitals, three of the best forwards, David and Marcel Rodman (both Vienna Capitals) and Jean-Philippe Paré (Graz 99ers), have also signed contracts with other clubs in the league. However, all indications are that the list of departures will still be lengthened. As the club started it’s summer training camp in Bled, Slovenia, three players did not participate, which means that they could be on their way from Jesenice as well: Gregor Polončič, Damjan Dervarič and Andrej Hebar.
A clarification of the problematic situation regarding HK Jesenice’s roster for the next season is expected to be made at the club’s general assembly on June 3rd.

Penker extends contract with Rögle BK

The Austrian national team’s backup goaltender, Jürgen Penker, has signed for another year with the Swedish Elitserien team Rögle BK. The 26-year-old, who came to the Ängelholm club from Danish Hvidovre in October 2008, experienced a satisfying first year in the Elitserien. He appeared in 30 matches during the regular season and achieved a GAA of 3.23, a save percentage of 90,05 and two shutouts.

Thus, it is clear that Penker will form Rögle's goaltending duo together with Cristopher Nihlstorp in the next season. Hence, the Austrian goalie obviously accomplished an impressive turnaround from a player chased out by an EBEL team to an inherent part on the roster of an Elitserien club.

Team Slovenia sticks with coach

Despite failing to achieve any of the two goals set - the qualification for the Olympics 2010 and the return to the 16 top nations from Division 1 - John Harrington will keep his job as head coach of the Slovenian national team. The Slovenian federation announced that the contract with the US-American has been extended for another year. Earlier this week, Harrington signed with Italian Serie A-side Asiago, which implies that he is going to fill both positions in the season 09/10.
The member of the legendary ‘Miracle on Ice’ team of the United States in the Olympics 1980 will be joined on Team Slovenia’s bench by assistant coach Dany Gelinas, who is going to work as coordinator for Slovenia’s U18 and U20 national team as well. Furthermore, Gelinas is one of the candidates for the position as new head coach of EBEL’s Olimpija Ljubljana.

Update: World Ranking & 2010 groups

In addition to the data already presented, here are the positions 1 to 6 in the 2009 IIHF World Ranking:

With Russia’s win in the final of this year’s World Championship tonight, also the grouping for the 2010 tournament is fixed and completed:

Wieser, Ulmer and Kristler top prospects ranking

The Austrian U20 national team achieved promotion to the top ten nations in the world in December, while the U18 team failed by a narrow margin only. Austria’s junior hockey, basically driven by the youth programmes of three clubs (Villacher SV, Klagenfurter AC, EC Salzbzurg), is gaining ground and shows a rather promising development. To provide a somewhat deeper insight in the group of the country’s most talented players, EP Austria offers a ranking of the most promising junior players eligible for Austrian national teams: The 2008/09 Top Austrian Prospects Ranking.

This list includes the most talented players born in 1989 and younger and focuses on players available for next year’s Junior World Championship in Canada (players born in 1990 and younger). The ranking bases on the comprehensive and detailed scouting activity of Elite Prospects’ network of experts throughout the season 2008/09.
Similar as in the rankings of the CSS, we have included the most talented players only and ranked them by their overall potential. For detailed information on every player on the list check their respective profiles on eliteprospects.com.


Link: 2008/09 Top Austrian Prospects Ranking (download via mediafire.com)

Group draw for WC 2010

With tonight’s results from the World Championship in Switzerland, the grouping for next year’s tournament in Germany is almost fixed. Only the final positions of Russia, Canada and Sweden in the 2009 IIHF World Ranking remain open. If Sweden loses its semi-final against Canada tomorrow, 'Tre Kronor' will join group C.

2010 IIHF World Championship - Groups so far:

Austria remains 16th in IIHF’s World Ranking

By finishing 14th in the current world championship, Austria gained 860 points in the World Ranking of the IIHF. This implies that Team Austria overtakes Slovenia but is itself overtaken by France and therefore remains on position 16 in the ranking for 2009.

Team Austria relegated for the sixth time

Austria’s national team got relegated from the A-pool due to a 2:5 loss against Denmark yesterday afternoon. Switzerland 2009 is the sixth time that Austria has to leave the top flight (after Stockholm 1949, Moscow 1957, Vienna 1996 and 2005, Moscow/Mytishchi 2007). As Germany will be hosting next year’s world championship and thus can not be relegated, Austria has to step down to Division 1 although they finished second in the relegation group.

Obviously, a heated debate on the reasons for Team Austria’s failure started immediately. Several newspapers and online magazines, which are mainly known for their poor quality of hockey coverage, instantly called for the demission of head coach Lars Bergström. However, it is evident that this relegation is first and foremost a result of the destructive development of the Austrian hockey system since the last collapse of the league nine years ago. Actually, Lars Bergström is the first coach in at least twenty years, who bases his work on a sophisticated reform concept for the Austrian hockey in general. This season, he tested 47 different players in 17 international matches, including nine rookies who played their first season on the senior level in 08/09.

As expected, the main problem area for the Austrian team has once again been the defence, which basically only worked satisfactorily in the boxplay. The same defenders which achieved the best penalty killing of all 16 teams in the tournament(!), broke down when they were at full strength and revealed major deficiencies in the game set-up.
Goalkeeper Bernd Brückler played an outstanding tournament apart from the opening game against Sweden: Two Shutouts in five games, a save percentage of 92.49% and a goal against average of 2.61. Thomas Koch (seven points) has to be named as a highlight in the Austrian offence, although he rather disappeared in the matches against top teams such as Sweden or the United States. Furthermore, 18-year-old Andreas Kristler was a big positive surprise due to his refreshing style of play.

Taking into account that there are several other young players (such as Herburger, Schiechl, Heinrich) in Austrian hockey who actually have the potential to perform on the same level as Kristler, the picture of the future of Austrian hockey does not need to be painted too black - at least with regard to the offence.


Note that Elite Prospects Austria already revealed the seeding of the two groups in next year’s Division 1 and the potential hosts a week ago here.

Benoit Mondou leaves Villach for Switzerland

24-year-old winger Benoit Mondou, who joined Villacher SV at the end of December 2008, is as expected on his way from the club. After a promising start (15 points in 15 games), Mondou was handicapped by injuries later on and did not score any points in his five play-off appearances. As Villach projects to have only five import players on the roster for the next season, the club refused to offer Mondou an extension of his contract. Now, the French-Canadian came to an agreement with an undisclosed club from Switzerland, a two-year-contract is expected to be signed after the World Championship.

Ofner and Altmann join Team Austria

For today’s match against Hungary, Austria’s first in the relegation group, the roster has been extended by winger Harald Ofner and defender Mario Altmann. They substitute the injured Michael Raffl, Robert Lukas and Christoph Harand.
For Team Austria only a win against their neighbouring country counts as they have to leave both Hungary and Denmark behind them in the group to avoid relegation to Division 1.

Austria’s lineup for the match against Hungary:
GK Bernd Brückler
D1 Gerhard Unterluggauer - Darcy Werenka
D2 Martin Oraze - Jeremy Rebek
D3 Andre Lakos - Philippe Lakos
D4 Mario Altmann
O1 Thomas Vanek - Thomas Koch - Oliver Setzinger
O2 Matthias Trattnig - Roland Kaspitz - Andreas Nödl
O3 Markus Peintner - David Schuller - Harald Ofner
O4 Gregor Baumgartner - Paul Schellander - Andreas Kristler

Slovenia as host for the WC Div. 1 in 2010?

As Slovenia failed to achieve re-promotion to the top 16 nations in this year’s World Championship Division 1, the national federation is now applying for the organization of one of the two tournaments next year. Slovenia is going to face Poland, the United Kingdom, Croatia, South Korea and the one of the two teams relegated from the A-pool ranked lower in the 2009 IIHF World Ranking (see Pre-Championship-Ranking here). If Hungary does not survive the relegation stage, it will join this Division 1 group next year, otherwise the sixth contester will be Austria.
Beside Slovenia also Croatia is going to hand in a bidding for the tournament. In the other group, consisting of Japan, Lithuania, Serbia, Ukraine and the Netherlands, the two latter applied for the organization so far. Austria would join this group if they (and Hungary) fail in this year’s A-pool relegation group.

Relegation round next

A rather chanceless Team Austria lost its ninth group stage match at an A-pool world championship in a row today. Latvia took an easy 2:0-win to advance to the qualification round after shooting out their opponents with 37:21 (Note: Check out EP Austria’s live commentary in our twitter.com channel). Austria, which had its undoubtedly best player in goaltender Bernd Brückler (SVS% 94,6), was highly harmless in the offence and has to fight for survival in the relegation group now. A mission even more difficult to accomplish as Germany has to play relegation as well. However, as host of the 2010 world championship the Germans can not be relegated, which implies that maybe even finishing second in the group may not be enough to remain in the top flight for Austria.

Relegation round, Team Austria matches:
Friday, May 1st, 16.15 CET: Austria – Hungary (Zürich-Kloten)
Sunday, May 3rd, 12.15 CET: Germany – Austria (Berne)
Monday, May 4th, 12.15 CET: Denmark – Austria (Zürich-Kloten)

Austria’s recent performances in relegation rounds have not been exactly brilliant. Since the World Championship applies the current playing format (2000), Austria had to play in the relegation group three times but survived only once, nine years ago in St.Petersburg.

2000, St.Petersburg, Russia
France – Austria 3:3 (Trattnig, Searle, Kalt)
Austria – Japan 5:3 (Brandner 2, Marczell, Wheeldon, Kalt)
Austria – Ukraine 3:2 (Unterluggauer 2, Kalt)

2005, Innsbruck & Vienna, Austria
Austria – Germany 2:2 (A.Lakos, Welser)
Austria – Denmark 3:4 (P.Lakos, Unterluggauer, R.Lukas)
Austria – Slovenia 2:6 (Kaspitz, Unterluggauer)

2007, Moskva & Mytishchi, Russia
Austria – Norway 2:3 a.s.o. (R.Lukas, Welser)
Latvia – Austria 5:1 (Stewart)
Austria – Ukraine 8:2 (Koch 2, P.Lukas 2, Peintner 2, Kalt, A.Lakos)

Live commentary Austria vs. Latvia

Be sure to join Elite Prospects Austria’s live commentary for the Austria vs. Latvia game. We’ll get started at 16.00 CET on our twitter.com channel.

Austrian lineup for the match of destiny against Latvia

GK Bernd Brückler
D1 Gerhard Unterluggauer - Darcy Werenka
D2 Martin Oraze - Jeremy Rebek
D3 Andre Lakos - Philippe Lakos
O1 Thomas Vanek - Thomas Koch - Matthias Trattnig
O2 Oliver Setzinger - David Schuller - Andreas Nödl
O3 Markus Peintner - Roland Kaspitz - Christoph Harand
O4 Gregor Baumgartner - Paul Schellander - Andreas Kristler

Group stage performance as usual

Austria will try to avoid the relegation group against Latvia tomorrow, only a victory in regulation counts. A look back into the history causes reasonable doubt that they will succeed: Since becoming a more or less regular participant in the A-pool world championship in 1993 (14 participations in 17 years), Austria has won only 14.3 percent (7 out of 49) of its group stage matches. Furthermore, they have not won a single of their last ten games!

Group stage played in the current format:

Six teams per group:

Austria’s last victory in a group stage match dates from April 24th 2004 - more than five long years ago!

April 24th, 2004
France – Austria 0:6 (0:2, 0:1, 0:3)
Praha, 3.609

Goals: 0:1 Kalt (1./Vanek), 0:2 Trattnig (10./Kalt, Vanek/PP), 0:3 Trattnig (26./Vanek), 0:4 Unterluggauer (42./Vanek, Trattnig), 0:5 Robert Lukas (45./Peitner, Szücs/PP), 0:6 Raimund Divis (57.).

Goalkeepers: Huet (24/30) - Reinhard Divis (16/16)

Penalty minutes: France 8, Austria 10

Another painful third period for Austria

Just like on Saturday against Sweden, Team Austria showed a disastrous performance in the third period against the United States last night as well. While trailing by just one goal after two periods, Austria lost the third with 0:4 again - final score 1:6. Thereby, the United States have won for the tenth time against Austria in an A-pool match in the world championship (see overview stated below). Taking into account Latvia’s win after shootout against Sweden, Austria now has to win against the Balts in regulation tomorrow to avoid relegation group.

Austria vs. USA in A-pool:

Austria takes on young US-boys

Following the disastrous defeat by Sweden in their opening match, Austria takes on Team USA this afternoon. Goalkeeper Bernd Brückler will be substituted by Jürgen Penker, Andreas Nödl arrives at Bern today but is not eligible to play yet. With Robert Lukas extending the injury list as reported, head coach Lars Bergström has only six defenders available. This implies that the originally benched seventh defender Martin Oraze (pictured above), who scored Austria’s only goal against Sweden with his first touch of puck, advances to the starting lineup. He will most likely play together with Jeremy Rebek, which leads to the brothers Andre and Philippe Lakos performing in the third defence pairing together.

The US team, which recently added center Chris Higgins from the Montreal Canadiens to the roster, won its first match in the tournament over Latvia (4:2) as defender Jack Johnson scored twice. US head coach Ron Wilson nominated one of the youngest teams in the World Championship with an average age of only 24.5 years, which stands for the second lowest number of all 16 teams (see complete list stated below). Only three players on the roster did not compete on the NHL level this year: Goalkeeper Robert Esche (SKA St.Petersburg, KHL), top prospect Colin Wilson (Boston University in 08/09, but joins Nashville Predators next season) and the goalkeeper Alec Richards (Yale University), who has not been registered yet.

€ 2.000 per player

The Austrian Ice Hockey Federation received an appearance fee of € 200.000 from the IIHF for participating in the current World Championship. Elite Prospects Austria is now able to reveal that the federation pays out bonuses to all players on the roster as well: Every player representing Austria in this tournament receives a total amount of € 2.000.

NHL’er Nödl joins Team Austria

With the Philadelphia Flyers being eliminated from the Stanley Cup Play-Offs last night, it is now clear that Andreas Nödl (pictured above) will join Team Austria in the World Championship. The club granted the permission for the 22-year-old’s participation in the tournament and Nödl is going to arrive at Bern on Monday. The NHL rookie, who appeared in 38 matches for the Flyers this year, fills the spot still open on Austria’s roster.

On the contrary, the tournament has already come to an end for another Austrian player: Robert Lukas is sidelined for all remaining matches due to a shoulder injury he suffered in last night’s opening match against Sweden.

4 minutes, 15 seconds...

Some statistical evidence regarding Austria’s predominantly ridiculous defence performance last night: How long did it take Sweden to score a goal, when a certain Austrian defender was on the ice?

Follow EP Austria on twitter.com

With the objective of an even more up-to-date coverage, Elite Prospects Austria just entered the world of twitter.com. We’ll publish brief information, breaking news and references to updates of this blog at twitter.com/EPAustria from now on. Enjoy!

Lineups for Sweden vs. Austria tonight

Elite Prospects Austria is able to reveal the lineups for tonight’s opening match of Team Austria against Sweden. Austria’s lines are going to look like as suggested yesterday. Bernd Brückler and Johan Holmqvist will be the starting goaltenders.

Team Sweden
GK Johan Holmqvist
D1 Magnus Johansson - Tobias Enström
D2 Kenny Jönsson - Johan Åkerman
D3 Nicklas Grossman - Dick Tärnström
O1 Loui Eriksson - Tony Mårtensson - Mattias Weinhandl
O2 Linus Omark - Johan Harju - Martin Thörnberg
O3 Niklas Persson - Rickard Wallin - Joel Lundqvist
O4 Johan Andersson - Marcus Nilson

Note: Patrik Berglund may be registered at short notice depending on his condition after his recent flight from North America to Switzerland.


Team Austria
GK Bernd Brückler
D1 Gerhard Unterluggauer - Darcy Werenka
D2 Andre Lakos - Jeremy Rebek
D3 Robert Lukas - Philippe Lakos
D4 Martin Oraze
O1 Thomas Vanek - Thomas Koch - Matthias Trattnig
O2 Gregor Baumgartner - Roland Kaspitz - Michael Raffl
O3 Oliver Setzinger - David Schuller - Christoph Harand

O4 Markus Peintner - Paul Schellander - Andreas Kristler