“It was our goal to reach the preliminary round. We have an experienced team and we are playing very well now, so we can go far,” said recovered forward Jaromír Kverka for the club’s website, who helped the Rams advance to the preliminary round with two points in the last round.
However, the progress did not calm down the Zlín fans too much, who accompanied Saturday’s win over Litoměřice by shouting Srdínko ven! addressed to the club’s sports manager Jan Srdínek, who in the eyes of the fans is one of the main culprits of the botched season.
But the Rams can look to the playoffs with optimism. Zlín enters the knockout stages in good form. He has won four times in the last five duels, with only Třebíč doing better.
This is not a short-term fad. The second half of the regular season was successful for the Rams, for example, only Kolín, Vsetín and their opponent from the preliminary round Pardubice B collected more points in the last twenty rounds. Despite the fact that the game was creaky in places, the Rams were able to extract points.
Zlín’s bet on experienced Slovakian coach Peter Oremus, who took over the team at the end of November, after the club’s management dismissed coach Ján Pardavý at the end of the month, and the duo of Martinů Janeček and Hamrlík lasted only two weeks in the role of coaches. The points of the matadors Richard Jarůšek and Tomáš Rachůnk, who strengthened the club at the end of January, also helped at the end of the regular season.
Now, for the first time since relegation to the first league in 2022, the Rams face the preliminary round of the second highest competition, in which lurks the b-class Pardubice, i.e. a young team with an average age of under twenty-five, with matadors Jan Kolář or Daniel Rákos and coach Richard Král.
“Pardubice have been in form in the last matches, they are playing excellent hockey. They stick to the things they have, they beat difficult opponents. I hope we allow them as little as possible,” Zlínský daily quoted the words of coach Oremus towards the lurking opponent.
The Zlín strategist will have almost a complete staff at his disposal. Although the Rams were plagued by injuries and illnesses for a significant part of the season, they had two defenders before the playoffs. Tomáš Hanousek underwent surgery and will certainly not play for the rest of the season, but Jan Štibingr, another marauder from the back row, is already training.
After all, Kverka, the hero of the last match of the regular season and one of the key forwards, missed his team for almost three months before returning to the lineup after an injury at the end of the season.
“I’ve been working hard for the last three weeks to come back and the thought of going through all that for one or two games was horrible. I’m so happy that we’re progressing and we’re going to keep playing. I’ve been watching the boys from the couch for three months, I’m glad I could come back and help when I was useless now,” said Kverka.
The play-off preliminary round series for two winning matches starts on Monday from 18:00 on the ice of Béček Pardubice in Chrudim, the rematch is scheduled for Wednesday from 17:30 in Zlín, a possible third decisive duel will take place on Friday in Chrudim.
Already on Sunday, the winner of the preliminary round will play a quarter-final series, in which they will face either the winner of the regular season, Slavia, or the runner-up Kolín. The composition of the quarter-final pairs will also be decided by the result of the second round of the preliminary round between Třebíčí and Tábor.
“We can succeed if we play our responsible hockey and don’t make backward mistakes. We have experienced players and if we follow what the coaches tell us, we can go far,” concluded Kverka.
