Despite a significant number of cancellations and delays taking place across European hockey leagues due to the coronavirus, the Czech national team will be taking part in the Euro Hockey Tour’s Karjala Cup in Finland from November 3-8.
The Czechs, Finns, Swedes (including Jontan Berggren) and Russians will face off in round robin play to determine a tournament winner, and on Thursday, the Czech Ice Hockey Federation named Filip Hronek to their team.
If you’ve been wondering where Hronek and Filip Zadina have been lately, both players and their respective Czech Extraliga teams, Mountfield HK and Ocelari Trinec, are currently stuck in lockdown with the rest of the Czech Republic.
The Czechs would be holding a World Junior training camp during the November break for European hockey teams, too, but they’re unable to practice right now. That’s why you haven’t heard about Filip Zadina participating in a WJC mini-camp the way that Lucas Raymond, William Wallinder, Albert Johansson, Theodor Niederbach and Gustav Berglund are for Sweden.
Mountfield HK actually tried to head to Germany to hold a mini training camp, but the Czech and German authorities caught wind of the plan to afford Mountfield HK some ice time (as teams aren’t even allowed to practice indoors until November 20th, per Hokej.cz’s Ondrej Mach), and they shut the trip down.
The same kind of restrictions underway in most of Europe aren’t in effect in Finland, Sweden or Russia right now (we’ll see what happens with this “second wave”), so that’s why the Karjala Cup will take place (hopefully).
