RAHL1 Fans' Player of Round 5: Ľubomír Patlevič. Voting on round six is underway, with Peter Mitter in the lead so far

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Starting with round five, fans can also have a say in who the best player in RAHL1 is. The first vote is closed and has a winner: the Fans' Player of Round 5 is Ľubomír Patlevič of HK Petržalka. He received two of the six votes, or one third, and was the only player to get more than one.

The fans picked a player whose performance was impossible to overlook. Petržalka beat Neanderthals 4:0 in round five, and Patlevič scored all four goals. He was one of four players with four points in the round, but the only one who got them all on goals. Marcel Ulehla of Wild Thing Karaoke (3+1), Denis Bučko of AHS (2+2) and Tomáš Griglák of Uličníci (1+3) had the same number of points.

How the vote turned out. Six votes were split among five players from three teams. Behind Patlevič, with one vote each, came his teammate Dávid Chachalák (two assists), Nikolas Ketner of Black Jokers (two goals) and a pair from AHS – Denis Bučko (2+2) and Michaela Feníková (an assist). So two votes stayed with Petržalka and two with AHS.

What's interesting is who didn't get a vote. Neither Ulehla, with a hat trick against Black Jokers, nor Griglák, with three assists, found a single voter, even though by points they were among the top four. Feníková and Chachalák, on the other hand, did get a vote even though they didn't score a goal in the round. So right from the start, the fan vote is showing that it is not just a copy of the scoring race.

Ľubomír Patlevič (No. 74) taking a shot. Wild Thing Karaoke – HK Petržalka (Round 2). Photo: RAHL

What the numbers say about the vote itself. To be honest: there weren't many votes. A hundred players took the ice in RAHL1 in round five and six fans voted, so the winner was decided by a margin of a single vote. We didn't launch the vote until the Monday after the round, and it stayed open until Saturday, until the start of round six. Yet all six votes came in during the first two days, and none were added after that.

For comparison: in RAHL3, 17 fans voted in round five and the winner was decided by a single vote – Lubo Maxián received seven votes, his Rockets teammate Andrej Štefko six. In RAHL2, four votes came in and each went to a different player. Across all three leagues combined, 26 fans have cast a vote since the launch.

Voting on round six is happening right now. And after just the first day there are already more votes than for all of round five. On Saturday evening there were nine, and the clear leader so far is Peter Mitter of AHC Pezinok Ducks with eight votes. He scored two goals and added an assist against AHS, but his team lost 3:5. He received all eight votes within less than forty minutes early Saturday evening – the Ducks fans evidently coordinated.

The only other vote so far again belongs to Ľubomír Patlevič, who with a 3+3 line in the 8:3 win over Uličníci was the most productive player of the round. That sets up exactly the kind of contest a fan poll is made for: the best numbers of the round against the player with the most active crowd behind him. Nothing is decided; with this few votes, a single locker room can flip the order.

How to vote. Voting takes place on the Player of the Round page. Just log in and pick a player – the list offers the ten most productive players of the round and, below them, everyone who played in the round, grouped by team. Every logged-in fan has one vote per league per round. Voting on round six is open until Saturday, October 17, at 8:30, when round seven begins with the Black Jokers – AHC Pezinok Ducks game.

Voting is going to get easier. We know that registering and logging in puts some fans off. That's why, starting Monday, October 12, we will set up voting with no registration required – confirming your vote through a confirmation e-mail will be enough. The rule of one vote per league per round stays.

We will bring you the round six result once voting closes. The more votes there are, the more the Fans' Player of the Round title will mean – and for now, it really takes very little to win it.