Šulc: Sanctions to be announced Friday

At Tuesday's meeting of the Association of Professional Ice Hockey Clubs (Asociace profesionálních klubů ledního hokeje, or APK LH in Czech), the fourteen member clubs gave Competition Director Stanislav Šulc a mandate to rule on the case involving improperly registered players. The ruling will be made public on Friday.

From the sound of things, it seems a certainty that BK Mladá Boleslav, HC Plzeň 1929, and HC Vagnerplast Kladno will lose the points they obtained in games where they dressed ineligible players. The only thing to be decided is how exactly the results of the games will be dealt with.

According to Šulc, there are three possibilities."Forfeits, removal of points or cancelling the results and points. The rules also allow others, but maintaining the status quo or replays are not realistic," he declared.

Forfeits would mean that results from all affected games would be thrown out and ruled 5-0 victories for the opponents of the offending teams. This option would affect the point totals for every team in the league. Removal of points would mean that affected teams would lose any points they acquired in games where they dressed ineligible players, but the opposing team's total would be unaffected, as would other statistics. Cancelling the results and points would mean the game scores would again become 5-0, but opponents would not gain points other than what they achieved on the ice.

After a week-long break in Extraliga action, two of the three teams that face sanctions took to the ice at home today.

Plzeň 1929 blew a 4-1 lead with 7:00 left against HC Slavia Praha and lost 5-4 in overtime. Petr Kadlec scored the game winner at 3:20 of the extra frame. With Plzeň's captain and General Manager Martin Straka out of the line-up following knee surgery, Radek Duda played his first Extraliga game in two years on a forward unit with John Lammers of Langley, BC and Nick Johnson of Windsor, CT. The trio was held off the scoresheet, but created a lot of traffic in the attacking zone and made life difficult for Slavia goaltender Miroslav Kopřiva in a losing cause. Duda had 17 points in 16 games with KLH Chomutov of the Czech First League.

In other action, Vagnerplast Kladno defeated Bílí Tigři Liberec 5-3 on home ice.