Last time the team of Steelers traveled to the south of Slovakia, where they played two matches during the weekend. The Tipsport League still continues and our hockey-players will play additional two matches. On Friday we will welcome in Steel Arena the players of the third Zvolen, on Sunday we will play against the newcomers from Detva.

Our Friday's opponent is currently on the third place of the chart of the top Slovak competition. With their 76 points it is 7 points more than Košice. After the final round they could have achieved even the first place of the chart, but in the home match they lost with Dukla Trenčín 3:4 after extension. In the Sunday's match the team of Zvolen was short of the forward Michal Chovan, who again broke his lower jaw and will not play at least for additional four weeks. On the contrary, the forward Radovan Puliš is supposed to return back. In this season he has not played a competitive match yet and last week he signed a contract until the end of the season with the management of the team of Zvolen.

Power plays of Zvolen so far does not mean threat against their opponents. They managed to shoot only 20 goals in 138 power plays (14.49 %) and in the chart of power plays they are only on the 8th place. However, when they play a defense play, they do much better and belong to the teams with best defense plays. They managed to defend themselves during 85.47 % power plays of their opponents and they even managed to score 6 times, which is best among all teams of the Tipsport League. The players of HKM Zvolen also belong in our competition to the best as far as bullies - so far they won 55.30 % of all bullies. In bullies the captain Lukáš Jurík, who won 60.81 % of them, is the best.

The leader of productivity of HKM Zvolen is the American forward Tim Coffman. In 37 matches he scored 19 times and added also 15 assistances. On the second place we have the above mentioned injured forward Michal Chovan. In this season he played in 28 matches only, but he collected the same amount of points. He hit the opponent's net 10 times and added 18 assistances. Nick Ross is still the most productive end-man of the team of Zvolen as well as entire Tipsport League. The 28 years old Canadian defenceman scored 7 times and added 20 assistances. The Zvolen's net is guarded by Marek Šimko and Jani Nieminen. The Slovak goalman is doing better and his success rate is 91.39 %. In this season he managed to play three matches without a goal. His Finnish colleague so far played 13 matches in the top Slovak competition. His success rate is 90.43 %.

On Sunday the opponent from Detva is awaiting our hockey players. The Steelers will meet with the current newcomer of the Tipsport League in Steel Arena. It will be the last time in the basic part. The players of Detva managed to turn the score with Žilina during the final period and added a victory 4:1 to their account. Despite that they are on the last, 10th place of the chart of the Tipsport League with 18 points and they are short of 17 points against Liptovský Mikuláš on the 9th place.

The team of Detva has the worst power plays in the league. They are on the 9th place, followed by the hockey-players from Poprad. The newcomers from Detva during the Tipsport League played 188 power plays. But they managed to score only 18 times, which is 10.84 % success rate. (For comparison – the first Nitra utilized 21.15 % of power plays). Detva played also 169 defense plays and their opponents shot 32 goals during them (success rate 81.07 %).

With 19 Canadian points the most productive player of Detva is the Czech forward David Videlka. This 26-year-old native from Havířov scored 9 times in 31 matches and passed for additional 10. With this number of goals, he is also the best shooter of the team as of January 8, 2018. He is followed by four players – Michal Murček, 15 (3+12), Ladislav Ščurko, he collected 14 (8+6) points and after him forwards Jozef Tibenský – Juraj Milý with 13 points (they both shot 7 goals and added also 6 assistances). As far as the space around the net Detva relies on their three goalmen - Uladzislav Viarbitski 10 matches, success rate 90.66%, Adam Nagy 20 matches, success rate 90.13 % and Matt Hackett 10 matches, success rate 88.47 %.

Last time Košice played their matches on the ice rinks of their opponents. On Saturday it was against Nitra and on the next day they moved to nearby Nové Zámky. After regular play time both matches ended equally and the victories had to be decided during extensions. In the first match our opponent was more successful, when Judd Blackwater decided about the victory of Nitra 4:3. But the second match ended-up better for the Steelers, when in the 62th minute Marek Hovorka decided about the victory 2:1 over the team of Nové Zámky.

The duo of coaches Marcel Šimurda – Peter Bartoš will be probably able to use Martin Dudáš, nevertheless on the list of injured players we still have Tomáš Hričina, Martin Bača, and Lukáš Matejka.

The opening bully of the match with Zvolen will take place on Friday, January 12, at 5:30 PM. The match with the newcomers from Detva will be held on Sunday, January 14, at 5:00 PM. KOŠICE GO, GO, GO!