Thursday, October 15, 2009

GORAN HOGOSTA - NHL FAILURE



Goran Hogosta. Prague 1978

Arthur Chidlovski said...

Roland was great... but if you ask me, it was Goran Hogosta, the goalie, who was the hero in 1977. I think Viktor Tikhonov should send him a huge pay check because in many ways he owes him for all his future success...it was Hogosta whom the soviets couldn't score against. as a result, soviet head coach Kulagin had to step down and that's how Tikhonov began to coach Team USSR.

That's right, Arthur
I agree. For some reason Goran had no success when he joint Quebec Nordiques in 1979-80 season. He played 21 games only with horrible 4.15 goal-against result.
But do you know that in fact Hogosta tried to make New York Islanders roster actually played one regulation game for them in 1977-78 season? The best goalie of the 1977 World championship played 9 minutes only wearing Islanders jersey, his task was more than tough - to compete with Billy Smith and Glenn Resch who was the best NHL goalie pair for this moment.

For some reason Quebec is not the best place for European goalies to play hockey. I mean Sergei Mylnikov...

6 comments:

  1. you're right... bill underwood, who used to work as a scout for the nordiques, was very surprised when i mentioned hogosta as one of the best goalies i saw in europe. neither hogosta, nor mylnikov had high reviews among the team management. especially, mylnikov whom they called "uncoachable".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Arthur, I really doubt Mylnikov speeks any English - pretty hard task to coach him...
    I still cannot unerstand how all of them came to NA with no basic English (?!) Some of them still coming (Malkin, Semin, Datsuyk)
    What were they thinking??? In 1993 before my first immigration I started to learn Hebrew way before I stepped out from my plain arriving the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv...

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's like Ovie said about Semin "style" of giving interview to NA media - he just sending all them aproaching him to...using pure Russian very specific words.
    Very "clever and nice" guy!

    ReplyDelete
  4. the fact that they came to play in the nhl back in the late 1980s without any english is kinda understandable. i am really surprised that they do it now :-(
    i was actually picting that it wasn't only english that made many "unfit" in the old days. it's the whole cultural thing. also, i won't be surprised if they didn't even know how to train in off-season, condition yourself, etc. before, it was something they were forced to do by the coaches and here it's up to you where and how you prepare for the season... remember how overweight was krutov in vancouver? i won't be surprised that he missed tikhonov to get him to run little marathons...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sure! Same story with tatarinov...

    ReplyDelete