“I don’t know if I will end my career, but right after the elimination with Olomouc, I knew one hundred percent that I did not want to end like this. So we immediately called Meda (general manager Petr Nedvěd) and he agreed that I could train on my own. “
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At first he rested for two weeks, he says, “he ended the season with the Olomouc teammates as he should,” then he worked hard for four weeks. And even though he has not yet jumped into the Czech Hockey Games, which start on Thursday in Ostrava with a duel against Finland (5.30 pm), he is training with the national team. And if there are no injuries, the nominations for the May World Cup in Finland will not be missed by an ace with a thousand games in the NHL.
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“The motivation is huge. 99 percent will be my last championship and I’m going there to succeed. I didn’t train for four weeks to go there. I will take everything in me and I hope we will go back successfully. Because I take the national team very personally and it has been a long time since we succeeded. “
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That period lasts exactly ten years, which even Krejčí was at the last medal from the big event, ie bronze, which had taken Hadamczik’s selection in Helsinki. Since then, Czech hockey has withered and the fall to the bottom came at the February Olympics, when for the first time in history the national team did not even advance to the quarterfinals. And Krejčí, who is celebrating his 36th birthday on Thursday, was part of a failed party. But now he wants to polish the strange season. “I remember the Olympics and Olomouc well. I met a lot of good guys and other environments. However, I am very happy that there is a chance to end the year with success. “
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He has indicated this several times in previous answers that his hockey future is still foggy. In the summer, he returned to the Czech Republic because he wanted his children to get to know the environment in which he grew up. At the same time, he wished that his parents and friends could see him with their own eyes every week. And so he exchanged the shiny American arenas for a “tin factory” in Olomouc, with which he ended up in the preliminary round of the playoffs against Vítkovice. It’s still wrong that the series was full of fouls, but …
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“I have my opinion, but it’s over. I’m glad I came here, and I don’t regret it. It opened my eyes. I finally see how my friends live because I haven’t been here for 17 years. “
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However, his transfer from the United States probably seems to be only a year’s issue. The American wife lacked relatives and acquaintances, he understood her. She returned to the Atlantic with the children on Monday as he turned into a straw widower for a month. He plays the championship and then decides on his hockey fate. “I will miss children. But after the championship, I will fly back after them. We’ll rest, we’ll calm down. For two or three months, I have to get off the hockey carousel, come up with other ideas, and then decide. Now I really don’t know … The children are older, my daughter goes to school and I don’t want to keep her from one environment to another. He plays a lot of factors in decision-making, “he admits.
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And that he would still have dry in the extra league and he would definitely not get lost in the NHL? “When I say the end, I don’t care what people think about it. It will just be over. ”
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A farewell event with the national team is now possible, which will be stronger and busier than the February Olympics due to the participation of NHL players. And theoretically, if the Boston Bruins, where Krejčí spent his entire NHL career, were eliminated in the first round of the Stanley Cup, he could also play with his friend David Pastrňák in Tampere. “I support them and I wish for them. I have a lot of friends there who deserve the Stanley Cup. But if it doesn’t work out, it will be good if Pasta arrives … “
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Even with him in the lineup, the success would probably be a little closer again.
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