diamond_ace 3,106 Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 (edited) KARLOVY VARY, CZECH REPUBLIC – The club team known as HC Energie Karlovy Vary is no stranger to the Czech Extraliga, having been an Extraliga participant since 1997 and a member of at least some level of Czech professional leagues since the split from Slovakia. In 2012, Karlovy Vary announced a junior team which had been granted entry into the MHL, which is the junior league that plays under Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. It was looked upon as a potential national junior team, much like Latvia’s HK Riga in the MHL, along with Dinamo Riga and Belarus’ Dinamo Minsk at the KHL level. These teams promote Latvian and Belarussian talent and serve to attract talented players to the sport. Karlovy Vary’s junior team was intended to do the same. The operative word there, of course is was. Financial issues forced Karlovy Vary to pull the junior team from the MHL and just keep their primary team (one of several competitors, unspectacular among its peers and in no way representative of national hopes like the junior team stood to be) in the Extraliga. The problem, of course, is what might happen with the few years of promising young stars who had performed on the junior team while it had existed in the MHL. Most are expected to filter through the ranks of the Extraliga, with a few making their way east to the KHL or even over to the NHL. Nonetheless, it deals a significant blow to Czech hopes for the future, a once-promising hockey nation with players like Jaromir Jagr, Petr Nedved, and Martin Straka falling to a clear second tier status and less likely to rebound with this club’s demise. One player who had been on the junior team, however, has hinted at a different career path. The VHL, a talented league with a rather unusual setup of five North American teams and five European teams, may just hold the key for the young Vaclav Hrdina, a third-line center on the Karlovy Vary junior team who has a desire for travel like so many young men his age. Unlike many, Hrdina might just have stumbled upon a way to explore the world while still earning a paycheck at his sport of choice. The VHL has a strict age policy for its prospects so Hrdina can’t make his way over just yet, but in the meantime he has accepted a contract with his hometown’s major league team in the Extraliga. While Hrdina has made it known that he wants to make the jump to the VHL, the question remains if the VHL has a place for him. He has loads of potential but is as of yet not that skilled in most areas, having only put up one goal and eight assists all season in his final year with the junior team. One stat that stands out for Hrdina and might point to his future niche is an 82.6% win rate at faceoffs, the highest in the league. His father, Jan Hrdina, used to play for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Phoenix Coyotes, New Jersey Devils, and Columbus Blue Jackets of the NHL and was skilled not only at faceoffs, but offensively as well. Could the VHL make room for a true faceoff specialist, or will Hrdina be forced to adapt other facets to his game in order to make it at the higher level? Edited July 5, 2016 by diamond_ace jRuutu 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evrydayimbyfuglien 600 Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 Review: Good job here. The first two paragraphs were hard for me to read, could have just been me though. I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do in the future both with writing and on the ice. Keep up the good work, man. 564 words, images, everything checks out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamond_ace 3,106 Posted July 5, 2016 Author Share Posted July 5, 2016 Thanks for the quick review - as for everyone else in the league: NO REPLIES? I'm a good writer, I should be generating replies. Come on, everyone. evrydayimbyfuglien 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.sniffuM 1,741 Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 If you wanted replies you would have named him Aeschylus Jigglejawns CXXXVII tbh diamond_ace 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evrydayimbyfuglien 600 Posted July 8, 2016 Share Posted July 8, 2016 On 7/5/2016 at 3:57 PM, diamond_ace said: Thanks for the quick review - as for everyone else in the league: NO REPLIES? I'm a good writer, I should be generating replies. Come on, everyone. Yeah, sorry, I think my last article went a good 8 days without even a review so don't feel TOO bad about it. I know everyone says league activity isn't down but I think PT discussion definitely is. diamond_ace 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evans 305 Posted July 10, 2016 Share Posted July 10, 2016 Review: First two paragraphs slightly threw me off too. Not a knock to you at all, just all the words you aren't really used to reading at once group with each other lol. I like when players come into the league with a back story and this gives you a pretty good opportunity to make a great one. Second generation hockey player coming from a team that was forced to disband? Sounds like something you can write about for multiple seasons. evrydayimbyfuglien 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisF 105 Posted July 10, 2016 Share Posted July 10, 2016 Nice artcle @diamond_ace. Very curious to see how your player develops moving forward. Best of luck. diamond_ace 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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