Krastenbergs: At Skudras, I was afraid to go to training, because it seemed that I couldn’t do anything right

Renars Krastenbergs | Photo: Guntis Lazdāns/LHF

Latvian ice hockey player Renārs Krastenbergs looked back on the past season in the “Devītnieks” podcast, and also remembered what he experienced in the Riga “Dinamo” team.

The 25-year-old forward signed a one-month contract with La-Chaux-de-Fonds in the Swiss second league (SL) at the start of the season to replace the then-injured Norwegian Sondri Ulden. Despite the fact that Krastenbergs collected 12 (6+6) points in 11 games and was the most productive in the ranks of “La-Chaux-de-Fonds”, the club decided not to continue cooperation with the Latvian. It should be mentioned that Lashodefon’s team with Tom Anderson and Sandi Smon became SL champions.

“Subconsciously, I thought I would stay. They had one foreigner who had an injury, but with another player we traveled together to fight for the other one [leģionāra] places in the composition. I immediately realized that I was better than him, and in the end he was fired two weeks before me – everything looked quite positive. Anderson and I were already laughing that I lost all seven shots in one game and that’s why I wasn’t retained. But yes – they just needed a centre-forward. The manager liked me, but the coach needed a ‘real’ center, whatever that means… That’s how it all ended,” revealed Krastenberg.

Having been a free agent for almost a month, Krastenberg reached an agreement with Graz 99ers of the Austrian Open Championship (IceHL) in November. “The end of the season was already like a parody,” said the striker about the situation in Graz. “When the offer came, I already knew [uz ko parakstos], because I know my way around Austria well. when I played there before, they didn’t do well. But now I looked at the squad – the squad was good, and the matches were also lost by only one, two goal difference. It was a risk, but at first it was good, I knew I would play a lot there. We fought with all the teams, but it was difficult because the team before that [turnīra tabulā] was in such a hole, because almost 80% of the games had to be won.”

The Austrian club announces parting with the striker of the Latvian national team

“We were close to the play-in, but then one loss came, and then it was that basically 12 games until the end of the season we couldn’t get anywhere. Then the parody started, the club simply gave up and basically said that we can leave, starting to plan everything for the next year – a new coach, president, manager were signed. Who we were there no longer mattered. We were put in a situation where we had no goalkeepers, the forwards played defense. In the last games, we were “led” there, we lost 1:7, 1:9 – the organization put us in that situation, but we players looked stupid,” said Krastenberg, noting that he is not sad about not continuing cooperation with the Graz club.

If the past season was wave-like for Krastenberg, then his professional debut in Europe turned out to be quite sad. Spent junior years in North America, striker 2020/2021. joined “Dinamo” of Riga in the season of The striker played just six games at the capital club before being sacked. Krastenberg admitted that he had difficulties working with the then head coach of the team Pēteris Skudras.

“At that moment, I experienced a bit of a divorce because I had just returned from America. Still came covid, and everything was so stuck that I didn’t know how everything would work out or if I would find somewhere to play. But the fact that I left Dinamo was the best thing that could happen,” admitted Krastenberg. “I think Peter didn’t like anything about me. In one of the first test matches, I was in the fourth shift, I played a couple of minutes, but in the next video meeting there were four clips of me. I’m being yelled at, even though I’m just existing there on the field…”

“For him [Skudram] already “closed” quickly. There really wasn’t much needed, I was also shouted in my ear a couple of times. I have already said before that I didn’t really want to go there for training. It was scary because it felt like you couldn’t do anything right, everything I did was bad. I was 20 years old, but it seemed that I went to training not to stay better and enjoy the process, but so that he would not notice me. It seemed normal at the time, but only later did I understand – thank God I got away from there. If I had finished that season there, I don’t know how it would have been.”