Covering the World Cup B-Group: Interviews with Canadian and Czech National Teams and Organizational Chaos

Spencer talks about their team, their chances of winning, and their star-less lineup. Long gone are the days of the 2015 championship, when Sidney Crosby, Tyler Seguin, and Brent Burns came to help the Canadians. The charged team made it to the gold in Prague. However, he also took the most valuable metal two years ago, when you would have had a hard time looking for a star.

Now the greatest aging winger is Milan Lucic. Overall, the World Cup lacks stars. So far, only Finn Mikko Rantanen, who has scored 100 points, is a true NHL star. “Perhaps Toronto will be eliminated soon and the more prominent players from there will want to extend their season,” says Spencer Sharkey, saying goodbye, as the Canadian players are already arriving for training.

I take the accreditation and rush to get a taxi, as the Daugava Stadium training hall is almost an hour’s walk away from the main hall. The taxi driver rushes, but suddenly stops and reverses. The policeman shouts at her in the loudspeaker, not to get in the way, because he needs to let the bus pass. Hockey players of the domestic national team sit in it. “I see that you are ‘kicking’ for the Slovaks, since on Saturday we play against your national team, perhaps a key match for promotion from the group,” I tell her. He smiles and stops me at the training hall.

I go in, look around for a while and have an interview with the general manager of the Czech national team, Martin Havlát. After the debate with the Czech journalists, I find out that the players of their team will not talk in the mixing zone of the training hall. The organizers are said to have banned it. Thundering in my mind, I run out and pass three Czech goalkeepers sitting on the curb in front of the bus. It’s warm in Riga, twenty degrees, even though I’m freezing in my apartment in an old building in the center of the city. But about that another time.

Gradually, the last Czech player also starts. I quickly catch a taxi and head back to the Riga Arena, where I am still talking to the captain of the Czech national team, Roman Červenka, in the mixing zone. He willingly distributes interviews for a good twenty minutes. During that time, I will also have time to ask Milan Lucic a few questions after the Canadian training. The tall power forward laughs that after his career he should run the Boston Marathon like his good friend Zdeno Chára.

I finish and get back in the taxi to move to Daugava. I arrive in front of the stadium, where colleagues from other Slovak newsrooms are already standing. The training was only for the first fifteen minutes for journalists. Fortunately, the Slovak hockey players talk directly in the small hall and I don’t have to get into a taxi for the fourth time. However, the beginning of the championship is accompanied by organizational chaos.