Saturday, January 27, 2018

Korea and Slovenia Have Their Olympic Teams Named

The host nation of this year's Olympics, South Korea, does have its own ice hockey league, where they have been trying to build up the game in their nation, certainly with the help of some North American talent, which does feature prominently on their team.  As long as players have been playing in the country for a number of years, they can assume citizenship and be eligible for Korea's Olympic team.

Most notable on Korea's roster is defenseman Alex Plante, a former Calgary Hitmen player in the WHL and a former 1st round pick of the Edmonton Oilers, back in 2007.

The Koreans might not be too bad, as they had to get through a group with Kazakhstan, Hungary and Poland, all three have made appearances in the World Juniors or the World Championships in recent years, so they will certainly be interesting to watch.

Player Name POS
Matt Dalton G
Kye Hoon Park G
Sungje Park G
Jin Hui Ahn F
Minho Cho F
Jungwoo Jeon F
Ki-Sung Kim F
Sangwook Kim F
Won Jung Kim F
Young Jun Lee F
Jin Kyu Park F
Woo-Sang Park F
Brock Radunske F
Sanghoon Shin F
Sangwoo Shin F
Michael Swift F
Mike Testwuide F
Hyung Gon Cho D
Won-Jun Kim D
Don Ku Lee D
Hyonho Oh D
Alex Plante D
Eric Regan D
Yeongjun Seo D
Bryan Young D

We all know that Slovenia's top hockey export in the world is Los Angeles Kings forward Anze Kopitar and he has done well to raise the awareness of Slovenia in the modern hockey world.  They have indeed qualified for the Winter Olympics and they have been making some noise on the world scene in recent years, appearing in the last Olympics, where they placed 7th with two wins to their name, and they have appeared in four of the last eight World Championships as well.

Their team captain, Jan Mursak, does have some NHL experience and might do well enough to be worthy of a selection in the hockey pool.  Mursak played a combined 46 games for the Red Wings over three seasons and had 2 goals and 4 points, but he is a staple for the Slovenian side and with the three pools in the tournament, there could be some room for scoring in there.

Player Name POS
Luka Gracnar G
Gasper Kroselj G
Matija Pintaric G
Bostjan Golicic F
Andrej Hebar F
Ziga Jeglic F
Anze Kuralt F
Jan Mursak F
Ales Music F
Ken Ograjensek F
Ziga Pance F
David Rodman F
Marcel Rodman F
Robert Sabolic F
Rok Ticar F
Jan Urbas F
Miha Verlic F
Blaz Gregorc D
Sabahudin Kovacevic D
Ales Kranjc D
Ziga Pavlin D
Matic Podlipnik D
Jurij Repe D
Mitja Robar D
Luka Vidmar D

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