On Sunday in Prague, David Pastrňák won the Golden Hockey Stick, or Zlatá hokejka – as named top Czech male hockey player of the year for the seventh time in eight years. Pasta wasn’t in town to collect the award, however. Instead, his mother, Marcela Ziembová, accepted the award on his behalf.

Libor Bouček, emcee of the gala event at Prague’s Žofín Palác, asked her, “Which is harder, to be the mother of a small hockey player or a big hockey player?”

“Big,” she quickly answered. “Nothing’s gone wrong up till now, so maybe I’ll screw up soon.”

“I have the same problem with live broadcasts, so we’d better end it,” said Bouček.

“Maybe Tomáš will lend us the toilet paper he packed,” she answered, referring to Tomáš Hertl’s speech earlier in the evening when he spoke about moving from San Jose to Las Vegas.

“For me, first place is Roman (Červenka), second place Lukáš (Dostál), third place, sorry Martin (Nečas), and fourth me, that is, David.”

“Of course,” said Bouček.

“So we still don’t have a potato,” said Ziembová, referring to the Czech expression of fourth place being the “potato medal.”

Pastrňák has a close relationship with his mother and Ziembová is often contacted by Czech media to comment on her son’s behalf while he’s abroad. It is known that she raised David and his brother Jakub almost alone, and in recent years has gone to great effort to learn English so she can communicate with David’s children, who like their father, spend most of their time either in the United States during the hockey season, or in Sweden, which is the home of his girlfriend.