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Olympic qualification tournament in Budapest: Hungary’s hockey team defeats Lithuania in first win
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Hungary was back on home ice for the first time since winning promotion to the A-Pool, and they did not disappoint the fans during the opening Olympic Qualifying Tournament game, icehockey.hu reports.
Head coach Rich Chernomaz game Miklós Rajna the start in net for the opening game of the Olympic Qualifying tournament, and Vilmos Galló and Bence Stipsicz were making their senior national team debuts.
Lithuania kept the game close at the beginning of the game as Mantas Armins looked good in net, however at the 15 minute mark of the game Vilmos Galló scored his first goal in his first senior national team game when he took a beautiful tape tape pass from Krisztián Nagy and fired it past Armins.
According to icehockey.hu, in the first part of the second period things got heated as Dániel Kóger and István Bartalis were both sent to the penalty box and Lithuania had a 5 on 3 for just under a minute. Hungary was able to kill both penalty kills and in the 28th minute János Hári put Hungary up by two when he banged in a rebound off of an István Bartalis shot.
Lithuania still did not want to go away as they played great in front of their own net and cleared out the garbage. In the opening minutes of the second period Hungary was on the power play when Frank ‘the Tank’ Banham fired a rocket past Armins who had no chance of saving it.
Hungary started to pull away as minutes later Dániel Kiss skated in and used a Lithuanian D-man to screen the goalie and put one in the back of the net.
The Hungarian defense held on and Rajna went the distance for the 4-0 shutout win.
