This past match week both Brasov and Csíkszereda picked up six out of the possible six points on home as ice. Interestingly enough both teams went up against Fehérvár and Ferencváros. Each team had a players that played well and pull their team, Braden Walls and Zsombor Antal finished with almost identical stats and the voting was split down the middle. Because of this for the second time in the history of this award there two Players of the Week, in Braden Walls from Brasov and Zsombor Antal from Csíkszereda.
Walls and Antal have vastly different backgrounds, just for starters Antal is a local player who is playing for his hometown team with Walls being an import who joined the ERSTE Liga after six seasons in France.
Braden Walls comes from Calgary Canada where he played his youth hockey before moving on to the Alberta Junior Hockey League where he played for Calgary and later Drayton Valley where he was teammates with future NHL goalie Ben Scrivens. Walls played Junior ‘A’ hockey so he could play NCAA hockey, for college he attended the University of Alaska-Fairbanks where he had another future NHL goalie defending his net in Chad Johnson. Future Stanley Cup Champion Jordan Hendry was also his teammate. He would also be teammates with players that would play in Hungary such as Adam Naglich who would go one to play for Fehérvár. After college he played two seasons in the CHL before deciding to play in Europe, his first season he played in France for Briancon where he was teammates with none other than Dr. Viktor Szélig and Bence Szirányi. After a productive season we would move on to Angers, during his seasons in France he would be teammates with Marek Dubec, Jonathan Harty and Raphael Girard.
Zsombor Antal came up through the youth system of the Transylvanian hockey hotbed of Csíkszereda where he grew up with players like István Sperncz, Tivadar Petres, Ede Mihály and Levente Péter. Antal left Csíkszereda for Budapest where he played for UTE and would end up being teammates with Sprencz and Petres again along with Csaba Nagy as well. For the 2006-07 season he returned to Csíkszereda where he would play the next three seasons, this was also the year where he played in his first senior World Championships. After the three seasons and a MOL League title in his hometown he moved south to Brasov where he would spend the next six seasons. In Brasov he would end up winning the Romanian League and also be apart of the team that made a surprising run to the MOL League finals before coming up short to eventual champions Nové Zámky. In 2015 he returned back home to Csíkszereda, where he and his club would like to finally win the Romanian title after finishing runners up the past two seasons, as well as making a deep playoff run in the ERSTE Liga as well.
Both Braden Walls and Zsombor Antal look to continue to turn heads with their respective teams as ERSTE Liga play resumes after the international break.