“I was just trying to read the play. We know where to be and what to do when we throw the puck, so I tried to be as close as possible to the goal and then finish as quickly as possible,” explained the 32-year-old Slovakian forward.
Thanks to a goal by Hudáček’s compatriot Martin Marinčin, Třinec took the lead in the first period and successfully defended it for a long time. Another Slovak in the final, Mislav Rosandič from Hradec Králové, eliminated him in the third part with a shot from the blue. “From that moment on, we had to take it into our own hands and actively go for the next goal. We had nothing else left. We believed all along that we would make Hradec,” said Hudáček, who came to Třinec before this season with a clear goal – to add the most valuable metal to the silver medal he won in the 2018/2019 season in Liberec.
Photo: Vladimír Pryček, CTK
Hockey players from Třinec take a picture with the winner’s cup.
They succeeded, Nestrašil and Daňo followed up Hudáček’s winning goal in the 57th minute with shots into the empty net, Třinec won 4:1 and could celebrate their fifth club title. “That’s exactly why I came to Třinec. I wanted to lift the cup at the end, so I’m extremely satisfied,” said Hudáček, who finished the playoffs with six goals and five assists in nineteen games.
Altogether, Třinec played three more in the elimination round than Hudáček was not allowed to play. The easternmost team on the extraleague map thus became the first to reach the Masaryk Cup from the preliminary round. “It was a difficult journey and I guess we are good if we managed it. We beat Litvínov, then favored Sparta and the best team of the regular season in Pardubice. We played as a team and our goalkeepers were also great,” Hudáček pointed out the important milestones on the way to the title.
“They didn’t trust us much after the basic part, and maybe that was our advantage. We knew they underestimated us, but we believed in ourselves and went step by step. We knew that we beat all those teams in the season and we know how to beat them. We put it in our heads, we put our egos aside and we beat them,” the Slovak hockey player described.
According to him, even the defeats in the final battles number four and five did not throw Třinecké. “On the contrary, it motivated us even more to squeeze the maximum out of ourselves. We knew that if we succeeded, no one could beat us,” smiled Libor Hudáček.
