A difficult fight is ahead of the Steelers in the following week. They will fight for points in the Tipsport League chart. On Friday they will travel to Banská Bystrica and play a match against them. Sunday will bring the match of Košice against Žilina. This will be the last trial of these two opponents in Steel arena in the basic part of this season.

The champions from Banská Bystrica last time lost with Dukla Trenčín on their ice 0:1. The freshly nominated Olympic player and the captain of Banská Bystrica Tomáš Surový is the most productive player of the team. In this season he played 37 matches and added 26 assistances to his 10 goals. Just one point less has the Canadian forward Cason Hohmann (12 + 23). Among the defense players excels the returnee Mislav Rosandić, who in 16 matches shot 1 goal and added 11 assistances. The net is alternately guarded by the legionnaires Jan Lukáš and Teemu Lassila. The Czech native is performing a little bit better. In 17 matches his success rate was 93.21%. The World Champion from the year 2011 Teemu Lassila played in v 24 matches and his success rate achieved 92.24%.

As far as power plays and defense plays, our team is doing slightly better. Banská Bystrica managed to utilize 18.24 % power plays and shot 31 goals during them. In defense plays their success rate is 83.54 %, which means the 6th place in the chart of this activity – in numerous disadvantages they conceded 27 goals.

In mutual matches with this team so far we are the weaker team. From the current four matches we won just one, in the 13th round on the home ice, 5:2. We lost with the rams from Bystrica in their place 1:2 and 3:5 and we also lost at home 2:4. The smash of the 40th round will be held on Friday, January 26, at 5:30 PM.

On Sunday, the team from Žilina will arrive to Steel Arena. In January they won just one match, when they beat the team of Poprad at home 4:2. In other six matches the wolves were losing. On Friday they will play a domestic match against Trenčín and will definitely try to improve the unfavorable balance.

The team of Žilina will miss their most productive player in the next match. The forward Lukáš Handlovský was punished for his action against Marek Uram and is banned from the next 12 matches. This former player of Banská Bystrica currently played 38 matches, shot 15 goals and collected also 13 points for assistances. On the second place is the Czech forward Tomáš Klimenta, who in 41 matches shot 10 goals and added 10 assistances. The most productive defense player from Žilina became Peter Mikuš. The former member of the Košice team played in 30 matches of this season and shot 2 goals and passed for additional eight. So he replaced the first best productive player, Canadian Felix Antoine Poulin, who left Žilina in the beginning of January. The obvious “number one” in the net is Tomáš Tomek. He was guarding 40 matches with the success rate of 92.74 %.

Currently Žilina is on the 7th place of the Tipsport League after last week's matches. Their balance is 50 points, which means they are losing 20 points against Poprad on the 6th place. But they are only 7 points ahead of Nové Zámky on the 8th place.

The balance of mutual matches with this opponent in this season is in our favor. In the current four matches with Žilina we enjoyed three victories. To home victories 6:3 and 5:2 we added one more 3:2 in their place. But we lost with the same result on December 30, 2017 on their ice.

The opening bully of the last mutual match of Košice against Žilina in Steel arena in the basic part will take place on Sunday, January 28, at 5:00 PM.

Come to encourage our boys and let’s drive them together for the victory.

KOŠICE GO, GO, GO!