This year in the PHL, Naprzód Janów Katowice was beyond bad. The team was downright awful. They scored 49 goals in their 47 games while allowing 363 goals against, a differential of – 314. That is only 1.04 goals per game, and 7.7 goals against per game. Their 363 goals against were 188 more than Zagłębie Sosnowiec (175) who finished second to last in goals against. They went on to drop out of the league and are currently being investigated for missing funds. In the past few years, it seems like at least one PHL team has some kind of financial problems then leave before the year is over. Last year the PHL even had two of them, but Janow was much worse than both Polonia Bytom and Orlik Opole.

Janow was worse in every single category and almost doubled the 2018-19 lowlights in some categories. Playing against Janow was a free pass to run up the score. Janow allowed double-digit goals in twelve games. The worse being an 18-0 defeat to Podhale Nowy Targ.

One of the biggest success stories of a Polish player in the PHL this year was Radoslaw Sawicki. Sawicki was released by GKS Katowice earlier in the year and replaced by an import. JKH GKS Jastrzebie picked him up and he had a career year recording 45 points (22-23-45) overall in 45 games. His regular-season career-high was 26 points before this season. One of his biggest games this year was an 8 point showing against Janow, that JKH GKS Jastrzebie won 14-0. Sawicki played three games against Janow this year and recorded 10 points in those games. Janow made up 6.7% percent of his games, but 22.2% of his points. This isn’t to take anything away from the talented forward, but without his games against Janow, his regular-season point total returns to 31, and is more in line with his previous years of 26 and 25 points respectively.

Sawicki was not the only player that benefited from Janow. Krystian Dziubinski who finished fourth in the league in scoring posted 15 points against Janow or 25% of his 60 point total. While for a majority of players you will only see a couple points, that you could argue they would have scored against an average team. There are numerous examples where players were able to post almost a quarter of their points just from a couple blowout games vs. Janow.

While evaluating players statistically and trying to find growth, those games against Janow are important to consider. As a growth in points maybe a bit misleading as in the case of Sawicki. This came into play a lot when evaluating players for my top 80 U23 list, as in these games against Janow especially younger players were able to play more due to the game being as close to as guaranteed win as you can get. As such some promising years by young players appear not to be the case. Janow was so bad this year that some point totals in the PHL were inflated in just a handful of games.

If you want to keep up with all the offseason news, make sure to follow us on Twitter @PolandHockey and like our Facebook page.