“I am from the generation that was only able to see Gábor Ocskay play on TV, I am too young to play against him. He is an iconic figure of Hungarian hockey and for Fehérvár as well, he was part of the rise of Fehérvár hockey.” said Fehérvár and Hungarian national team forward Csanád Erdély. “These games are always different than the rest of the games during the season, we want to play well in his honor. We would like to play in a style that he did and it is an honor to wear the same jersey that he did for so long.”
On the opening day, Fehérvár beat DEL2 club Lausitzer Füchse by the score of 3-2 after they opened the game up with a 2-0 lead. Juho Uotila scored twice in the first period to put the home up, Former Fehérvár forward Chris Bodó and Lausitzer tied the game up at 2-2 after the second period. In the final 20 minutes David Gilbert found the back of the net to make it 3-2 as the home team held on to the one goal win.
The second game was former KHL team Zagreb who is now back in the EBEL. The Croatian club was the stronger of the two teams as they defeated Fehérvár 5-2. With Zagreb up 3-0 Jeff LoVecchio got Fehérvár on the scoreboard to make it 3-1. Zagreb scored twice more to go up 5-1, before a Jonathan Harty goal set the final score at 5-2.
Defenceman Bence Szirányi talked about what the tournament was like this year and what to expect from the team this year. “This year the tournament structure was different than in the past, playing three games in three days is very tiring. It was a good way to finish the tournament. Our goal for this season is to make the playoffs no matter what, after what happened the past two seasons. We will have a strong team that will work hard.”
In the final game of the tournament Fehérvár took on Nové Zámky, the game started out great for Fehérvár as Dániel Kóger scored in the second minute of the game. In the final minute of play in the second period Olivier Latendresse put his own rebound in to make it 2-0. Artu Luttinen scored early in the third period to make it 3-0, not much later a Péter Vincze shot went off of a defender to put Volán up 4-0. The Slovak side got one goal back late in the game however Luttinen scored his second goal of the game with only seconds left in the game.
Dániel Kóger had the following to say after the game, “We knew that this would be our final preseason game before the start of the season so we need to be close to a complete team as much as possible. Everyone is working hard, we have not been able to play three complete games but luckily the final game was pretty good for us. There were changes made during the three games, but if we stick to this game plan we will have success during the season.”
