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Player of the Month

The European Hockey.Net European Player of the Month is awarded to the player with the most oustanding performance over the course of the month

Nominations are collected at the end of each month, then a vote by the site's admin team decides the winner.

December 2005 - Miroslav Hala

The outcome of the Player of the Month award has never been as unanimous as it was for the December 2005 award.

Miroslav Hala was selected by all administrators of this website as their number one choice to capture the award.

Source: www.hkdukla.sk

The Slovakian netminder had an unbelievable month in which he nearly broke the official pro-league scoreless streak record. He kept his opponents from scoring for 322 minutes in a row before HC Kosice's Jan Lipiansky finally managed to break the deadlock. The world record is held by Brian Boucher who kept a scoreless streak going for just over 330 minutes back in the 2003-04 season when he was tending the net for the Phoenix Coyotes.

Throughout December, Miroslav Hala played nine games for his team Dukla Trencin in which he just allowed four goals. Even more impressive were his six (!) consecutive shut outs.

Hala himself realizes his performance was something to be proud of. "I am really thankful and delighted. Streaks like this don't happen every day," Hala tells eurohockey.net. "Perhaps it will take a number of seasons before someone manages to do it again."

With a hot goaltender between the pipes, Dukla Trencin moved up the standings rapidly, much to the delight of Hala. "Perhaps that was the best thing to come out of December. The whole team played great and we overtook league leaders Nitra. A perfect month for us. I feel great about winning the award however the whole team should get credit and this award belongs to all of them."

It was well needed. Having been a top team in Slovak ice hockey, Dukla Trencin did not have the best of starts of the season. "The team changed a lot during the off-season due to players returning to the NHL so we basically had to build a new team," the goaltender explains. "Already in pre-season it showed we were not clicking and when we lost a lot of points in the early stages of the league we started getting nervous. We failed miserably offensively and were shut out in several games ourselves. Luckily after a change of tactic things went better for us, but still we convert too few scoring chances."

Trencin wasn't the only traditional top team do suffer from the end of the NHL lock-out. Also Slovan Bratislava, HC Kosice and HKm Zvolen suffered. This gave an opportunity for other teams to step into the gap. Especially MHK Nitra and HC Poprad succeeded in that.

Hala comments, "Both teams kept about the same roster for three years now. Their performances went well and this led to good fan support. Nevertheless I am sure powers will be restored, Slovan and Zvolen will come back. Their players are too good and experienced not to recover from a bad start."

Miroslav Hala has been a faithful Trencin person. Other than a brief loan spell to Zilina, he has been playing for his team all his life. He started playing hockey when he was five years old.

"I have been a goalie all my life. I never wanted anything else." In a country where offense comes first this is begging for an explanation. Hala remembers it well, "When I was a little boy, I always liked the smell of goalie equipment."

It doesn't come as a surprise that he has always paid special attention to goalies when he was watching them. "I watched them carefully so I could learn from them. My favourite of all was John Vanbiesbrouck."

Although he's been amongst the better goaltenders in the Slovak league, the 26-year old is not looking for a move elsewhere at this moment.

"I had an offer from Russia last year, but the team did not let me go. Right now I still have a one -year contract with an option for another year. If I were to play abroad I'd like to play in a country where they play a wide open game rather than a physical game", Hala admits. "But until the opportunity is there I do not think of moving. I am happy in Trencin. Here is my home, here I started with ice hockey."

Interview conducted by Joeri Loonen

Related links

Miroslav Hala's profile

Dukla Trencin

Slovakian Extraliga