The Hockey News has released its archive to all THN subscribers: 76 years of history, stories, and features.

Subscribe now to view the full THN Archives here

Also, go to thn.com/free to subscribe.

Slovakia's New Generation—Feb 28, 2022 - VOL. 75, Issue. 12 - Ryan Kennedy

SOMETIMES A BRONZE MEDAL feels a lot better than you might think. That is definitely the case for Slovakia, which finished third in the men’s Olympic tournament in Beijing, bringing glory to a hockey nation that hasn’t had a lot of big victories in its history.

The team rode a vintage bus through the streets of Bratislava in the wake of the win – with adoring fans cheering en masse in the city square. Now, hands up if you saw this team triumphing in such a way before the Olympics began.

Full credit goes to GM and former NHLer Miroslav Satan, who hired veteran bench boss Craig Ramsay as coach for the 2018 Games and stuck with the Canadian for Beijing. Then Slovakia put together a roster blending youth and experience, with the most prominent being Juraj Slafkovsky. The 2022 draft prospect was a powerhouse at the Olympics, racking up a goal per game and earning tournament MVP honors in the process – not bad for a 17-year-old kid who still has braces on his teeth.

So Slafkovsky provided the offense, former Red Wings prospect Patrik Rybar shut the door in net, and the rest of the squad played a physical, stifling brand of hockey that kept the other teams off the scoresheet for the most part. (Personally, I was hoping to see more ice time for 2022 draft prospect Simon Nemec, but I’m not going to quibble with Ramsay’s strategies when they turned out to be so effective.)

But this is not just a great story of a team coming together. This is a story of hope for a hockey nation on the cusp of something special. For years, Slovakia has been outside of the ranks of the power countries (Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic and the U.S.) and, at the teen level, had even slipped down into minnow status. Thanks to the pandemic, the under-18 squad still hasn’t been able to gain promotion back to the top rung of the IIHF tournament after getting relegated in 2019.

Hope has arrived, however. Slafkovsky, Nemec and 2023 draft prospect Dalibor Dvorsky were among the heroes who led Slovakia to a silver medal at the 2021 Hlinka Gretzky under-18 tourney on home ice. That momentum could have carried over to this year’s World Junior Championship had the competition not been cancelled midway through. Now that it has been rescheduled for the summer (away from any Red Deer weddings, we hope), Slovakia will get another shot at making the hockey world shake, and I’m excited to see if it does.

Of course, my excitement is not the priority here. The people of Slovakia and the country’s hockey community? They’re the real target of these good vibes. It’s no secret the nation’s influence has shrunken recently, as Slovakia’s participation in the 2016 World Cup was limited to sending some of its players to Team Europe. Incidentally, Satan was GM of that squad, and the combination of Slovakians, Slovenians, Swiss and more ended up going to the final against Canada – but Satan wasn’t engineering a team under his own country’s flag. Zdeno Chara is nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career, and Marian Hossa is already enshrined in Toronto. A spark is needed.

I believe the Beijing Olympics could be that spark. As awesome as the run at the Hlinka Gretzky was, that was at the junior level and more for the hardcore hockey fans. The Olympics is the Olympics, even if NHLers weren’t around and most of the games were terrible to watch. Any kid in Bratislava or Kosice who watched the Beijing triumph now has something to shoot for. There is a template for success.

And the best part is the nation isn’t building anything from scratch; the history is already there. This is a hockey country that is always at the world juniors and always has players in the NHL. But smaller nations hit peaks and valleys, and it’s important to capitalize on the peaks when you’re talking about the grassroots.

Slafkovsky, Nemec and Dvorsky are the near future, but the hope is they are just the beginning of a new generation of Slovakian talent to bolster Satan’s national program and lead to more thrilling highs on the international stage.