Poland men's national ice hockey team

Poland at the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, their first appearance at the Winter Olympics. They finished ninth.

Poland was a regular participant of the early Winter Olympics, first competing at the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where they finished ninth out of eleven teams. They would appear at ever Winter Olympics until 1956, with their best finish being fourth in 1932.

Financed by state coal money from the 1950s to the 1970s the Polish hockey team was a regular at the top level upsetting the Swedes, Finns, and Czechoslovaks from time to time. They hosted the World Championship for the only time in 1976, with the matches taking place in Katowice. At this tournament Poland defeated the Soviet Union 6–4 in their opening match, the first time Poland ever won against the Soviets and what is regarded as one of the greatest upsets in international hockey history. While Poland finished seventh and was relegated for the following year, their victory against the USSR helped prevent them from winning gold for only the second time in 13 years.[2]

The national team in 2006.

In the Olympics earlier that year, Poland played 5 matches in the top division, but lost all of them. In the first game, the team managed four goals on the West Germany but it was not enough as they lost 7–4. Four days later, after being destroyed by the Soviet Union, the Poles took on Czechoslovakia who dominated the whole game throughout and won 7–1, but after the drug testing, the officials found that one of the Czech players tested positive for doping and they awarded Poland with a 1–0 victory, although they didn't receive any points in the standings. With only two games left and no points in the standings, Poland had no shot at a medal, but still played the last two games against the United States and Finland, and lost 7–2 and 7–1 respectively.

Poland managed to clean up a bit over four years and played well during the 1980 Olympics and finished seventh out of twelve teams. They managed to pull off a huge upset in their first game by beating Finland 5–4, who would eventually advance to the medal round. In their next game, they played Canada and hoped to complete an even bigger upset. The Canadians didn't let this happen and beat the Poles 5–1. In the third game, Poland took on the five time gold medalists, the Soviet Union. The players knew that this would be a challenge because they had played the Soviets many times before and had lost by usually very lopsided scores, such as 8–3, 9–3, 16–1, and 20–0. The Polish team, however, had also beaten the Soviets once in the 1976 World Championship and some of the players from that game were still on the team. The team tried to keep the Soviets down, but it was too much and the USSR stormed to an 8–1 win.

Poland at the 2017 World Championship Division IA tournament in Ukraine. They finished fourth.

With their toughest games out of the way, Poland would have one more chance to try to get to the Medal Round. They took on the Netherlands and went down early in the first period but managed to tie it about four minutes later. The Dutch team scored twice more in the period to lead 3–1. Polish hero Wieslaw Jobczyk (who scored a hat trick in the 1976 upset against USSR) scored to put Poland within one goal but the Netherlands stormed back to get two more goals before the third period to make it 5–2. The Poles ended up losing 5–3 and saw their hopes for the medal round come to an end. They had one more game against Japan, who had not won any games in the tournament and only tied once. Poland burst out in the first period and scored 3 goals before twenty minutes had ended. They scored two more goals and Japan seemed out of it. The final score was 5–1 for Poland. The team's final record was 2–3–0 and it received 4 points in the standings.

When Communist rule ended in 1989, the Polish national team began a slow decline in international play. They reached the Olympics in 1992, the most recent time they have played there, and finished eleventh out of twelve teams. During the 1990s the first two Polish-born and trained players were selected in the NHL Entry Draft: Mariusz Czerkawski was selected in the 1991 by the Boston Bruins, and Krzysztof Oliwa in 1993 by the New Jersey Devils; Oliwa won the Stanley Cup with the Devils in 2000, the first and only Pole to do so.

Poland last competed at the Elite level in 2002 World Championship, where they finished fourteenth and were relegated. Since then they have remained in Division I, but have not earned promotion back to the top level, though they have finished just outside of promotion several times. They were relegated to Division IB in 2018, the lowest they had ever played at.

Updated as of 5 May 2023.[5] Defunct national teams are listed in italics.

Opponent	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	GF	GA	GD
Australia	1	1	0	0	5	3	+2
Austria	59	26	3	30	183	180	+3
Belarus	17	4	0	13	38	77	+39
Belgium	5	4	1	0	29	6	+23
Bulgaria	2	2	0	0	27	2	+25
Canada	25	0	1	24	22	175	-153
China	6	6	0	0	79	11	+68
Croatia	5	5	0	0	33	4	+29
Czech Republic	1	0	1	0	2	2	0
Czechoslovakia	44	2	2	40	58	336	-278
Denmark	31	18	3	10	133	99	+34
East Germany	71	35	13	23	302	234	+68
Estonia	18	16	1	1	88	33	+55
Finland	52	5	8	39	107	264	−157
France	53	21	6	26	144	150	-6
Germany	53	16	7	30	159	188	-29
Great Britain	36	10	2	24	111	128	-17
Hungary	65	34	6	25	199	142	+57
Italy	56	31	4	21	184	139	+45
Japan	42	34	2	6	214	98	+116
Kazakhstan	21	2	1	18	42	81	+39
Latvia	20	5	0	15	46	67	-21
Lithuania	21	17	0	4	121	46	+75
Netherlands	40	35	2	3	209	85	+124
Norway	77	39	7	31	316	243	+73
Romania	62	50	5	7	390	106	+284
Serbia	1	1	0	0	10	2	+8
Serbia and Montenegro	1	1	0	0	13	2	+11
Slovakia	7	0	1	6	11	41	−30
Slovenia	25	8	0	17	56	72	-16
South Korea	13	9	0	4	51	29	+22
Soviet Union	33	1	0	32	43	321	-278
Spain	2	2	0	0	9	1	+8
Sweden	36	5	4	27	61	227	−166
Switzerland	46	20	6	20	159	165	-6
Ukraine	42	18	2	22	113	129	-16
United States	35	6	2	27	42	187	−145
Yugoslavia	21	19	1	1	139	53	+86
Total	1 145	508	91	546	3 948	4 128	-180

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