A hockey fan has to expect that the national team will start playing completely differently. Far from being as defensive as under the Finnish coach, Rulík will want to transfer the effective and quite pleasing style with which he led the Czech team to a surprising medal at the U20 World Cup. An active, aggressive display in defense, while also trying to dictate the tempo of the game and build self-confidence, this is Rulík’s calling card
When he accepted the offer, he expressed his pleasure that the work of the entire implementation team did not go unanswered, but he also said quite frankly that he would not go into it with people he did not know. According to the new coach, adapting the players to a style of play based mainly on skating, good work with the puck and pressure on the goal is mainly about self-confidence. He wants to pump him into the national team so much that it manifests itself as with this year’s unexpected medalists, the Germans and Latvians, who, even according to Rulík, certainly did not have better players than the Czech team.
Radim Rulík, the new coach of the hockey team. The key factor for my decision was that the guys from the twenties went with meVideo: Sport.cz
The phrase that he wants to play hockey that gets people out of their seats is apt for his philosophy. Similar to Miloš Říha four years ago, he comes with the belief in building the European skeleton of the team for the World Cup, although in the end it will still depend on how many NHL reinforcements he will have available.
“We have to focus on European players and fighters from overseas, whose number is constantly decreasing, they can be the right enrichment,” says Rulík, and he believes in the path that has already proven successful for him and made him the coach of the champion Litvínov or led to the success of the twenty. One almost wants to say God bless him and all evil away!
Martin Kézr
A graduate of the law faculty of Charles University, whose destiny became sports journalism. Martin Kézr has been working in the editorial office of Práva, where he is the head, since 1990, and he also passes on his experience at events of the Journalist Incubator. He is the head of the hockey section of the Club of Sports Journalists.