Latvia’s Mogo calls on veteran stars
Group A features something of a Baltic battle, with Lithuania’s Hockey Punks hosting Narva from Estonia and HK Mogo from Latvia. Iceland’s Skautafelag Akureyrar makes up the quartet in Vilnius.
Latvia’s HK Mogo looks like the team to beat. The Riga-based club is stacked with top-level experience under head coach Girts Ankipans, a two-time Olympian (2006, 2010) as a player. His roster includes Kaspars Daugavins, who captained Latvia’s history-making bronze medal roster at the 2023 IIHF World Championship and played in the NHL for Ottawa and Boston. Daugavins, now 37, is one of four Olympians on the Mogo team, with defenders Krisjanis Redlihs and Kristaps Sotnieks, plus forward Gints Meija, who is Mogo’s captain.
Those four have almost 300 World Championship appearances between them, and another forward, Maris Bicevskis, represented his country at the Worlds on four occasions.
Host team Hockey Punks suffered a tragic loss following the untimely death of head coach and long-serving ex-player Mindaugas Kieras in August, aged just 45. As well as winning the national championship last season, he assisted Ron Pasco as Lithuania won gold in Division IB. Hockey Punks’ forward Ilja Cetvertak wore the ‘A’ on that team, and his club mates Laisvydas Kudrevicius and Tomas Krukovski were also involved.
Narva was the only team of the four to compete last season, finishing in third place after hosting a first-round group. The Estonians’ only victory came against a team from Reykjavik. Maksim Berezhonov, 24, was the team’s leading scorer in the competition with 5 (2+3) points. He also top-scored in the Estonian championship with 52 points in regular season and 18 more in a successful playoff campaign.
Skautafelag Akureyrar provided the bulk of Iceland’s roster for its World Championship IIB silver medal campaign last year, including assistant coach Sheldon Reasbeck. The 39-year-old, who also helped Serbia’s U18s to Division IIB gold in 2019, won the Icelandic championship in his first season in Akureyri.