In the basic group, they lost to Sweden and the Czech Republic, narrowly beat Switzerland and overtime beat Kazakhstan. In the quarter-finals, as in last year’s championship, their peers from Finland were beyond their strength.
“We suffered all the time, but I knew it was going to be extremely difficult. We had almost ten players here who don’t play regularly and you can’t lie. When I was looking at who else to take, who could handle it physically, there weren’t many names to choose from .
I will put my hand in the fire for every single player we brought here. He deservedly won that nomination, but in the situations in the matches, the lack of playing experience showed,” defended the composition of the team, the coach of the Slovakian 20, Ivan Feneš.
The fate of Slovaks at the Junior World Cup was decided for the third time in a row by the end of the quarterfinals. A year ago, they lost to Finland 3:4 after extra time, and in 2023 they were eliminated by Canada after the same result.
“It’s frustrating. But we showed character and that we can play with the big powers. Unfortunately, the difference between the top four and us is still there,” Feneš added.
We were let down by individual mistakes
Even Rastislav Konečný did not miss the junior championship. The former hockey player and TV expert has been working as a manager in the Slovak Ice Hockey Association for several years.
He carefully followed the actions of the Slovak 20-year-old at the championship in Canada and shared his observations with television viewers. For Športweb, he evaluated the performance of the Slovak team and indicated where he saw its biggest shortcomings.
“Each match in the group brought out both the good and the bad side of our game. If we look at it in the language of numbers, we finished in third place in the group, which is not a disaster.
Rather, I was disturbed by some things in our game that we were not used to from previous championships. I have no doubt that all the guys gave it one hundred percent,” says Konečný.
He identified the performances of Dalibor Dvorský and Juraj Pekarčík, who were among the best attackers at the tournament, among the biggest positives of the Slovak team at the WC.
Canada Hockey MS20 Pekarčík Juraj Pekarčík was among the best players in Slovakia at the tournament.
“On the other hand, it is a great pity that no one else joined them. In difficult matches, we would benefit if the productivity was spread over several formations. I’m not saying that the other guys didn’t give it their all, but those who were expected to were not productive,” Konečný states.
According to him, quality was absent in the team. The players from the lower formations, whose task was primarily to defend, took their place. From the point of view of the negatives, the most noticeable were the frequent individual mistakes, which unfortunately ended with goal actions by the opponent.
“We saw frequent breakdowns in our game there. Many times we looked for solutions that were not the most correct.
Even though we had a good passage, for example in the first third of the match against the Czech Republic, we conceded a goal to the opponent twice and that brought the whole team down psychologically,” says the native of Považská Bystrica.
He does not consider Alan Lenďák’s goal in the quarter-finals against the Finns to be a mistake by the execution team. The goals he conceded in the first period were scored after mistakes in the defense and the goalkeeper himself did not have much of a chance to prevent them.
“I certainly wouldn’t blame them for the position of Lenďak in the goal. It was obviously a joint decision of goalkeeper coach Petr Kosa with Ivan Feneš and his assistants. They tried to choose the best goalkeeper for the decisive match in the tournament, given the given situation.
Unfortunately, they did not succeed. “Samo Urban then jumped into the match very well as a number two, but the Finns already had a big lead, which they kept,” says Konečný.
Should Fenes quit?
Due to the fact that coach Feneš had extremely talented classes at his disposal in previous years and did not achieve significant success with them, there is talk of whether the 20-year-old deserves a new impetus in the coaching position.
“I would not like to comment on the change of coach. I am curious about the report that the implementation team will provide to the association after the championship. It is easy to say what could have been different, but only the coaching staff can see inside the team and know about things that are not obvious from the outside.
If the 20-year-old had advanced to the semi-finals twice in previous years, when there was really little separating them, then we could talk about the fact that Feneš is the most successful youth coach in Slovakia. It’s all a game of details,” states the 36-year-old former striker of Žilina, Skalice and Košice.
Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD/BILDBYRĹN/Shutte / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
Ivan Fenes Ivan Feneš at MSJ 2025.
According to Konečný, what should be changed in Slovak hockey in order for the youth to move up on the international level is a topic for a longer discussion.
“It is questionable whether it is better to move in the direction of a centralized training project or to focus on youth work in clubs. A lot of things happen in the background that do not manifest themselves immediately.
It takes time. It is also necessary to wait for the development of things that are not yet going in the right direction and adjust them in such a way that it makes more sense for youth hockey,” says Konečný.
At the same time, he believes that the people who are responsible for the direction of Slovak hockey can correctly evaluate things that are not working.
“On the other hand, there is no need to panic. We should support what works for us and can make sense in the long run, regardless of whether someone comes up with irrelevant criticism or not,” he adds.
The numbers of the stadiums do not lie
Michal Hudec was the co-commentator of the matches of the Slovak juniors. The four-time extraleague champion said that the players deserve praise, above all, for their combativeness.
“Hats off to the boys getting back into the game in the quarter-finals. They went after it and didn’t want to give up. It’s a shame that when they had already done so much and reduced the difference to one goal, they made a fatal mistake and lost the match,” said Hudec after the decisive match.
The former striker of Slovan, Banská Bystrica and Nový Zámkov compared the “hockey” situation in Slovakia and Finland based on the available statistics.
“The Finns have 66,000 registered players, we have 11,000. In Slovakia, there are 8,800 players under the age of 20, while the Finns have 35,000. In Finland, there are 290 indoor stadiums, 84 outdoor ones.
We have 77 indoor and 27 outdoor stadiums. For example, the Swedes have even more of them, and they don’t even need to talk about Canada. We need to talk about these things as well,” he emphasized.
According to him, if we take into account the player base, hockey conditions and infrastructure, Slovaks are still doing relatively well.
“The infrastructure needs to be improved, we have been talking about it for years. We need to have more stadiums so that we can recruit as many children as possible. That’s the only way we can get closer to the players and then there will be something to choose from. It will not be easy, because we are not in a simple time,” explained Hudec.
The junior championship in Canada culminates during the weekend. Tomorrow, the semi-final duels between Finland – Sweden and the Czech Republic – USA are scheduled.
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
