Today in the Polish hockey news cycle, Poland will be playing the first of their two games against Mestis clubs and Tipsorts Liga officials are in Poland to talk about GKS Tychy joining the league next season.

Mestis Games

First, Tomek Valtonen and national team squad are heading to Finland to take on TUTO Hockey and KeuPa HT. Both of these clubs play in the Mestis. The Mestis is the second best league in Finland and should be a good test for the senior national team. There was also supposed to be a Chinese team for Poland to play against, but due to visa issues, the Chinese team canceled. The roster for the team also experience some changes as Aron Chmielewski and Bartłomiej Bychawski are injured and will be replaced by Szymon Marzec and Marcin Kolusz. These tests are much are like the one’s former national team coach, Ted Nolan, did when he took the team to Canada to take on a Canadian university and an Allan Cup Hockey league team.

GKS Tychy to Slovakia

Representatives of the Tipsport Liga are in Poland today to talk about GKS Tychy joining the league, and maybe even a larger merger between the PHL and Tipsport Liga.  The Tipsport Liga is the top league in Slovakia. The league has already accepted two clubs from Hungary. They are currently doing decent fairing 8th and 9th in the league. I have no doubt that GKS Tychy is a stronger club than them and feel they could do even better in the league. Having a team play outside of Poland in a higher league would be a big step for Polish hockey and something that needs to happen. More teams joining would be even better, but it could be very risky.

Lipinski Starting

I wondered if there was a chance Jakub Zawalski, would get the start for Poland today against Japan, but team General Manager, Roch Boglowski responded to me on twitter with today’s starting goalie.