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Janos Vas hungry for a chance Wednesday, December 12, 2007 By Kevin Wey One chance. That’s all Janos Vas wants. “If I keep playing like this, they’re going to give me… (pauses),” Vas started saying of his chances of playing in the NHL. “Like, one game, I don’t care,” Vas continued. “Just give me a chance.” Vas is close to warranting that chance, having scored 10 goals and 11 assists in his first 27 games of the 2007-08 AHL season with the Iowa Stars, including two five-game point streaks and an additional four-game point streak. He’s become one of Iowa’s most consistent players in his third year in North America, something that seemed only a distance possibility not too long ago. The 23-year-old Hungarian winger has come a long way, whether one considers it since playing in Hungary as a boy, since moving to he Malmo organization in Sweden in 2000, since being drafted by Dallas in the second round of the 2002 NHL Entry Draft, or since his rookie pro season in North America. In 2005-06, Vas seemed as unlikely for an NHL future as any prospect Dallas had playing in Iowa or Idaho. Today, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Vas could see some time in Dallas. He’s come a long way. Beginnings in Hungary Born January 29, 1984, in Dunaujvaros, Hungary, a city just south of Budapest on the Danube River, the beginning to Vas’s hockey career happened almost by accident. “I remember my father took us, me and my brother Marton, took us to the free skating,” Vas recalled. “We just went there and had to sharpen our skates, and so the coach was sharpening the skates for us and he asked if we wanted to play hockey and we just said, ‘yeah.’” “So, we just tried out, and we liked it, so we stayed playing hockey,” Vas said in his not-quite grammatically correct English, but always close enough so that one knows what he means. That trip to free skating was in 1990, when Vas was six years old. The coach was Arpad Kercso, who Vas credits with building hockey in Dunaujvaros. Kercso, Vas explained, claimed that he would build a hockey team in Dunaujvaros that would win the Hungarian League championship and that most scoffed at him. Ferencvaros TC (FTC) and Ujpesti had a history of dominance in the Hungarian League, as they combined to win 35 championships between 1958 and 1995 (FTC had 21, Ujpesti had 14), so Dunaujvaros wasn’t really on the radar. But, Kercso had the last laugh when Dunaferr SE Dunaujvaros won the Hungarian League championship in 1996, and would go on to repeat in 1998, 2000, and 2002. Three years after Dunaujvaros won that first Hungarian League championships, a wonderful thing happened to Vas: his hometown hosted the 1999 Pool B World Junior Championships. His brother Marton played for Team Hungary at the tournament and was one of the top players on the team, having left his homeland to develop his game. Marton had left Hungary in 1997, as a 17-year-old, to go to North America to play junior hockey and played junior B in the United States for the Flagstaff Mountaineers of the Western States Hockey League for the 1997-98 season and played the next two seasons for the Hawkesbury Hawks of the Central Junior A Hockey League. One of the teams at the tournament, fortunately for Janos, happened to be Denmark. “Denmark played there, and the Danish coach was coaching in Sweden, and he just asked around in Hungary, the national association, I don’t know how you say it, ‘Who could be the player who’s young and could be better when he’s older?’” Janos recalled. “They just said my name,” Vas said of the Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation’s response. “I was one of the best in Hungary at that time, at my age.” And so it was, Janos Vas was on the map of the Malmo Redhawks organization, a club whose top team played in the Swedish Elite League (Elitserien) and which had elite junior clubs all the way down the ladder. Vas attended three training camps for Malmo between 1999 and 2000. “After the third one, they just said I should come for the next season,” Vas said. “So that’s how it happened.” Move to Sweden Only 16 years old, younger than when his brother Marton made the move to North America, Janos made the move from Dunaujvaros to Malmo, Sweden, the third largest city in Sweden, located across the Oresund Sound from Copenhagen, Denmark, connected in 2000 by the Oresundsbron, a tunnel and bridge system that connects to the two countries by four lanes of highway and two lanes of rail. The move from Dunaujvaros, population 51,000, a city founded for industrial purposes by the Communists in the 1950s (and which was initially named Sztalinvaros, or “Stalin City”), to the 625-year-old Malmo, with a population of 280,000 and a metropolitan area of 605,000, was a significant change for Vas, not only in learning a new culture and language (Swedish), but in taking his game to the next level. “To go to Sweden, for me, probably, was the best thing I did in my career, because it’s tough to come out from Hungary if you are, like, over 20,” Vas said. “It’s real tough, because there’s no scouts, at all. “Maybe at the World Championships, but it’s really tough.” Vas would know. His brother Marton, a regular on the Hungarian national team, was only able to secure a decent contract outside of Hungary last season, when he signed with Briancon of the French Elite League. His eldest brother, Matyas, who now works in the United Kingdom and plays “hobby hockey,” never played professional hockey outside of Hungary. Prior to making the move to Malmo, Janos had continued to play in Hungary and even played in two games for Dunaujvaros in the Hungarian League as a 16-year-old. In March of 2000, Vas represented Hungary at the European Division I U18 Championship in Maribor, Slovenia, where he led Team Hungary in scoring with 2 goals and 6 assists in 4 games against, lending credence to the Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation’s recommendation that Vas was the top young player in Hungary. However, these accomplishments still happened in relative obscurity. With the Malmo IF organization, in contrast, Vas would have plenty of opportunity to be scouted by NHL teams’ European scouts on a regular basis. During the 2000-01 season, Vas primarily played for Malmo’s J20 SuperElit team, Sweden’s version of junior A hockey. He played 3 games for Malmo’s J18 Allsvenskan team, too, scoring 2 goals, but he played in 20 of 21 games for the J20 team and scored 4 goals and 4 assists and took a whopping 100 shots, a trademark of Vas’s game. After the J20 season, Vas received a call from back home that he had been tabbed to play for Hungary at the World Championships. Only 17 years old, Vas played for Hungary’s senior national team at the 2001 Division I, Group A, World Championship in Grenoble, France, coached by one Arpad Kercso, the coach from his youth. It was the first year that the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) had switched from having a World Championship format that had an A Pool, a B Pool, a C Pool, and a D Pool, to having an elite pool, and then two groups in three further divisions, from Division I to Division III. Hungary earned a spot in Division I by virtue of winning the 2000 Pool C World Championship in Beijing, China. The team’s goal heading into France, according to Vas, was to avoid relegation to Division II, and Hungary met its goal by finishing fourth in the six-team tournament. Three-and-a-half years younger than any other player on Team Hungary, Vas had 2 assists in 5 games. Scouts Take Notice The 2001-02 season saw all J20 SuperElit teams play an expanded schedule of 37 games, of which Vas played 33 and scored 13 goals and 17 assists, second in Redhawks scoring to Danish forward Frans Nielsen. Vas missed a little time with Malmo around the New Year, when he played for Hungary at the 2002 DII World Junior Championship in Zagreb, Croatia. Just short of turning 18, Vas led Hungary in scoring with 4 goals and 1 assist in 4 games at the under-20 tournament. Of personal note to Vas, Malmo teammate Frans Nielsen led the tournament in scoring with 4 goals and 10 assists in 4 games on a Danish team that lost a heart-breaking Gold Medal Game to Japan to finish second in the tournament. Nielsen has since played in the NHL for the New York Islanders, becoming the first Danish citizen to play in the NHL (although not the first Danish-born player to play in the NHL, a distinction held by Poul Popiel), serving as a source of hope for Vas. Team Hungary also called upon Vas for the 2002 Division 1, Group B, World Championship, a return home for him, as the tournament was held in Dunaujvaros, and Szekesfehervar, Hungary. In his second tournament with the men’s senior national team, Vas scored 1 goal in 5 games, as Hungary finished second to Denmark, who promoted up to the elite division of the world championships and has not been relegated to Division I since. Once again, Malmo teammate Frans Nielsen was on Team Denmark and one-upped Janos with 1 goal and 1 assist in 5 games. Training some with Malmo’s Elitserien team, finishing second on Malmo’s J20 SuperElit team as an 18-year-old (by the end of the season Vas was 18), leading Team Hungary in scoring at the Division II World Junior Championship, and playing for Team Hungary at the World Championship, Vas had put himself into consideration for selection at the 2002 NHL Entry Draft. A Door Opens Entering the 2002 NHL Entry Draft at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Vas was ranked 55th among European skaters by the NHL’s Central Scouting Service. Certainly, this did not etch in stone that Vas would not be picked prior to the middle rounds of the draft, but it strongly hinted at it. But then, with the second pick in the second round of the draft, the Dallas Stars went off the board and took Janos Vas with the 32nd overall pick, and Vas almost missed it. “After the first round ended, I almost went to the bathroom, when they called my name,” Vas recalled. “So, that was funny.” Vas went to the draft floor, did the photo shoots, the interviews, and was almost overwhelmed. The whole weekend was unlike anything he had ever experienced. “For a Hungarian kid, I did not know what’s going on,” Vas said of the draft. “I came over to Toronto and it was so new to me, the whole thing. “I couldn’t figure it out. Like, I’m here, and I’m going to belong to an NHL team, and what does that mean?” His father, however, helped the 18-year-old Janos put it all in perspective. “It was good that my dad talked about, at that time, ‘This is nothing,” Vas recalled of his father’s sage advice. “I felt like I became a better player when drafted, but it’s really not (true),” Vas said. “It’s just like a door opens for you that, if you’re going to go through or not. “The draft is, that’s all.” After June 22, 2002, Janos Vas’s NHL rights were held by the Dallas Stars. A door had opened, but there was still a long way to go. Four Teams in One Year Vas again played in Sweden in 2002-03, playing for four teams in total. He played 17 games for Malmo’s J20 SuperElit team, putting up 5 goals and 12 assists, and played 14 games for Malmo in the Elitserien before the league’s break for Christmas, the Baltica Cup, a four-team tournament in which the Swedish national team was involved, and the World Junior Championship. Although, in actuality, it would be hard to say that Vas actually played 14 games with the Redhawks before Christmas. “I think I was sitting on the bench, like, 16 games or something, played one and I scored one, then I had to sit on the bench, too, again,” Vas recalled of his riding the pine as an 18-year-old in the Elitserien (Vas actually dressed 11 games before scoring a goal in his twelfth game). “It was strange, like, looking back,” Vas added. “They had to dress young guys, but they didn’t play them. “So, that was a strange rule there, but it was a good feeling,” Vas said of merely dressing for the Elitserien team. Vas also played a couple of games for IK Pantern, a team in Malmo that plays in the Swedish First Division, before playing in two games for Team Hungary around the New Year at the 2003 Division II, Group B, World Junior Championship in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. He scored a whopping 3 goals and 5 assists as Hungary won the tournament and earned promotion to Division I the next year. Upon returning to Sweden, Vas was loaned to IF Troja/Ljungby of the Allsvenskan League, where he would see his first regular action with a high-level senior professional team. In 14 games, Vas scored 2 goals and 1 assist, but the final game of the season spelled disaster. “I think I just went to hit a guy a he stepped by me, but I still hit his body, but with me knee, and I fell down and my knee was just under me,” Vas recalled. “So, I just felt a big crack. “I just knew after that, something happened.” The late-February injury also meant Vas would not have the possibility to play for his country again that season. “If I played a game after, I would have gone home and played for the World Championships for Hungary, but it was all canceled while I was in the hospital and having surgery.” Returning from Injury Over four years later, Vas is somewhat philosophical in regards to that first major injury. “Probably, I had to go through that to build up my legs on the rehab,” Vas said of his knee injury in 2003. “You have to find something good in the bad things, too.” The rehabilitation of that knee injury kept Vas out of action in 2003-04 until late November, and he did not play his first game of the season until Dec. 6 (for the J20 SuperElit team). After two games with the J20 team, Vas was dressed for the Elitserien team Dec. 11, just before he’d left to represent Hungary at the 2004 Division 1, Group A, World Junior Championship in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 14 through 20. The submaximal Vas played in all 5 games for Hungary and finished with 4 assists, second in Team Hungary scoring for the tournament, although his team did not fair so well and was relegated to Division II for the 2005 World Junior Championship after finishing last. When Vas returned to Malmo, the J20 league was still on break for the World Junior Championship, so the ElitSerien team dressed him in three straight games from Dec. 26 through Jan. 4 before he rejoined the J20 team for the rest of the season. Except for two more games with the Elitserien team Jan. 20 and Jan. 22, Vas played the rest of the regular season for the J20 team, where he finished with 5 goals and 3 assists in 15 games and helped the Redhawks finish third in the J20 standings. The Redhawks became red hot and made it to the J20 Finals against MODO, but ended up losing the three-game series two-to-one. Vas finished the J20 Playoffs with 5 goals and 2 assists in 8 games, tied for third in Malmo playoff scoring, finishing the season on a high note, one that still remains one of his favorite hockey memories. Game On! Entering the 2004-05 season, the 20-year-old Vas was no longer eligible to play for Malmo’s J20 team, so Malmo loaned him to the Halmstad Hammers of the Allsvenskan League for his first full season of senior professional hockey. In 39 games for Halmstad, Vas scored 9 goals and 8 assists, including 6 goals and 4 assists in 12 games of the Allsvenskan Sodra Var, helping Halmstad finish first in the “South Playdowns” and easily avoid relegation to the Swedish I. Division. “That was probably a big thing for me, to get used to playing against seniors,” Vas said of the importance of his season with Halmstad. Vas then further played for Hungary at the 2005 Division I, Group A, World Championship in Debrecen, a city in his home country. In 5 games, Vas had 1 goal and 1 assist. Vas’s future was uncertain after the 2004-05 season. His contract with Malmo had expired, and the NHL Lockout showed little signs of opening. However, as the spring turned to summer, there were signs the ice was thawing, and on July 21, 2005, the NHLPA ratified a Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NHL. Less than a month later, Vas’s future looked less merky, as the Dallas Stars signed the 21-year-old to a three-year entry level contract (ELC), as mandated by the new CBA. Coming to America After attending Dallas Stars training camp, Vas was assigned Sept. 23 to the Iowa Stars, an AHL expansion team in its inaugural season and Dallas’s new AHL affiliate. Vas started 2005-06 with Iowa, but was assigned to the Idaho Steelheads of the ECHL Oct. 26 for a five-game stint. He was recalled to Iowa Nov. 7, after scoring 2 goals and 3 assists and regaining a little confidence, but it all came to a halt on Dec. 3, when Vas broke his left wrist when checked by the Peoria Rivermen’s D.J. King. “If I would have been a little smarter, then maybe I could have had that injury, like, not to have, because I shot it and he hit me and I took my hand inside,” Vas recalled of the injury sequence. “It was just a weird hit and I just broke my hand in the hit.” Vas returned to action Jan. 5, taking his cast off to play each night early upon his return, but he was again sent down to Idaho Jan. 30. After another five-game stint, in which Vas scored 2 goals and 3 assists, he was again recalled to Iowa Feb. 9. Unfortunately, a month later, Vas again suffered injury, tearing his MCL when he was checked along the boards March 5 against the Manitoba Moose. Out for another month, he returned to the I-Stars line-up April 8 and finished out the regular season with 2 goals and 9 assists in 35 games. The 22-year-old closed out the season by playing in all seven of Iowa’s playoff games, scoring 1 goal and 1 assist before the I-Stars were defeated the eventual AHL Western Conference champion Milwaukee Admirals in Game Seven of the Western Division Semifinals. Vas’s second season of professional hockey in North America went a little smoother, as he was relatively healthy and scored 13 goals and 13 assists in 72 games. “Last year I just had a concussion, that’s it,” Vas said in recapping his injuries from the 2006-07 campaign. “Just a concussion…,” Vas said, acknowledging the serious nature of the injury. But then Vas added, “Just one week, I missed one week of the season, so that was awesome.” Rarely is a season with a concussion awesome, but after three serious injuries in two years, Vas took what he could get. What Vas wasn’t getting was much attention, though. He had just finished ninth in team scoring for the Iowa Stars, with barely over a point every third game. In fact, Vas’s 0.36 points-per-game pace was ahead of only Dan Hacker, Yared Hagos, Francis Wathier, and John Lammers amongst regular Iowa forwards. Few would have predicted that Vas would be up on the verge of a breakout season. But, statistics don’t tell the whole story. Close to Fulfilling a Dream Vas had worked hard his first two seasons and had made steady improvement. Even though he was a fairly early cut from Dallas training camp, assigned to Iowa on Sept. 23, Vas did not sulk, and he knew what he had to do. “I was a little bit sad that they didn’t give me a chance in training camp, but I knew what was going on behind (the scene), and there were young players coming in and they had to show what they can do, too,” Vas said. “But, I just have to come here and enjoy hockey. “You can’t play like you want to be somewhere else. You have to be here and like it here, and that’s what I’m doing.” That may sound simple, but it takes on more significance in a season where Vadim Khomitski and Konstantin Pushkarev have left the Iowa Stars to play in Russia and in a season where fellow third-year pro Mario Scalzo left the team and demanded a trade. Simple, though, is the name of the game for Vas. “On the ice, like, I don’t want to do so,” Vas said. “Just do the simple stuff. “What works for the team, works for me.” For Vas, that means playing a two-way game where he doesn’t try to get too fancy with the puck. “I don’t want to do turnovers,” Vas said. “I don’t want to do, like, stupid hope plays.” It does mean, though, taking a lot of shots. After 26 games, Vas led the Iowa Stars in shots on goal with 85. Many of his shots come from the perimeter and have little chance of scoring, but they do create rebound opportunities. Others come from closer in, where Vas can tap home rebounds, but he occasionally unleash a laser beam wrist shot with pinpoint accuracy top shelf. Now a top-six forward that also plays on the power play and the penalty kill for Iowa, Vas has taken advantage of his opportunities in 2007-08 and taken his game to a new level. “Janos has kind of put himself into that area of guys that are considered,” Iowa Stars Director of Hockey Operations Scott White said in an interview Nov. 30, prior to the team’s game against the Manitoba Moose. “It just depends on what the Dallas coaches want,” White continued. “It will be a youthful guy that will go, and I would say that he’d be in the discussion right now.” The added maturity of Vas’s game after two seasons in North America has been vital in making him part of that discussion. “He just has a little more confidence,” White said of Vas. “He’s more comfortable with the language, he’s better fit than I think he has been, and he’s been around our coaching staff for a couple years, and I think that helps. “He’s just trying to make an impression and he’s been very consistent to date and that’s what we look for the rest of the year.” Fellow Iowa Stars winger Chris Conner made an impression and received the call Nov. 1, and Junior Lessard was recalled Dec. 5 for two games, but Vas might be the next to receive a chance. If Vas got that chance, it’d fulfill a dream. “When I was a kid, I always wanted to play in the NHL,” Vas said of his goal. “It’s a big thing for my country, too. “Nobody else (from Hungary) has played in the NHL yet, so that’s my goal.” Others have come close. Tamas Groschl was the first Hungarian-born player drafted by an NHL team (the Edmonton Oilers in the ninth round of the 1999 NHL Entry Draft), and goaltender Levente Szuper, drafted in the fourth round of the 2000 NHL Entry Draft, dressed in nine games for the Calgary Flames as an emergency back-up during the 2002-03 season, but the Hungarian netminder never saw of minute of NHL action. If Vas were recalled, he would be the first skater to be dressed in the NHL, and stepping on the ice for only one shift would make history. Vas has long thought making that history, and he’s been fairly certain of what type of player he’d be. “I always see myself… (pauses), here, right now, I’m playing on the first line, but probably, if I make the NHL, I’d be on the third line or something, being the guy who is giving energy to the team and keeping pucks out of the net and shoot a lot and just having good forecheck and hit some people but still pay smart,” Vas said. “I’m definitely not the fighter type,” Vas said with a smile. White agrees with Vas’s assessment but does see room for improvement. “I think he could be a bottom six, potential, forward,” White said of Vas’s NHL potential. “I think the area he would probably have to get better at is the physical side of it, on a more consistent basis at the next level, especially in the bottom grouping gin the NHL. “He has energy, but I would like him to be more consistent physically.” Vas always forechecks hard, but the 6-foot-1, 205-pound winger does need to finish his checks with more power to become more of a physical presence. It might even require another year of development, and that’s something that would require the Stars to tender Vas a qualifying offer next summer, as he’s due to become a Group II restricted free agent after the 2007-08 season. So, Vas is his “contract year,” and he could, no doubt, receive tempting offers from European clubs, but Vas is fairly steadfast in his goal. “If this year I don’t play in the NHL, we will see the contracts and blah, blah, blah, blah, but my main thing is to play in the NHL and make Dallas and just play there,” Vas said. “Play there,” he added for good measure. Not Without a Price Playing here has meant Vas can’t play over there, over there being wherever the Hungarian national team is playing. Since coming to North America, Vas has not played for the Hungarian national team, a team which finished second to Slovenia at the 2007 Division I, Group B, World Championship in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and just missed promotion to the elite division; a team for which Vas might have tipped the balance. “It’s pretty bad right now that I can’t play for the national team, because if you make the playoffs, the national team is over there,” Vas said of the World Championships, generally held in late April. “I mean, the World Championship is over.” The conflict between the AHL Playoffs and the World Championships gives Vas mixed emotions. “It’s sad and fun,” Vas said. “I want to make the playoffs, but I want to play for the national team. “It’s two things…(Vas pauses), it’s not working.” Although there’s a long way to go before the 2008 AHL Calder Cup Playoffs begin, the Iowa Stars have not killed their chances at making the post-season, as no team makes the playoffs early in the season, but they can certainly take themselves out of it. If Vas isn’t in the playoffs in North America this season, be it Iowa or Dallas, he’ll rack up some frequent flyer miles. “If we don’t make the playoffs here, then I’m flying back right away,” Vas said of joining Team Hungary in Sapporo, Japan, for the 2008 Division I, Group B, World Championship, held April 13 through 20. Even then, he’d miss a game or two, as Iowa’s regular season does not end until April 13. That said, Vas knows how close Hungary is to taking the next step. “Last year they were second, just one game to make the top group,” said Vas with hints of frustration and urgency in his voice, but also determination and hope. “Like, 2002, we were second when Denmark went up and they still play in the top group,” Vas said. “So, we have chances, we just have to have the luck and the energy to play give games in a row.” Despite yearning to playing for his national team, Vas’s determination and dedication to fulfilling his dream and playing in the NHL and becoming the first Hungarian to play in the NHL takes precedence. And now, the distant possibility is nearing reality. He’s come a long way. Kevin Wey is a contributor to McKeen's Hockey, which provides prospects and draft coverage.
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