MILAN — A Slovakian hockey star was on his bench, an ice bag to his neck, and couldn’t have been happier.
There in front of him, his teammates scored two goals 33 seconds apart en route to securing a spot in the semifinals of the men’s hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Slovakia defeated Germany, 6-2, on Wednesday, Feb. 18, at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in quarterfinal action.
Those goals frustrated the Germans into taking a timeout. While they did that, Slafkovsky was getting looked at by a team trainer after an awkward spill along the boards when he was tied up with Germany’s Moritz Seider and Fabio Wagner. Slafkovsky ended up on his belly, looking a bit confused, but had no problem getting up and skating to his bench.
‘I kind of, I don’t know, broke my ankle, fell on the board,’ Slafkovsky said, joking. ‘I was a little shaken up. But, ice pack fixes everything. So I put the ice pack on my neck, on my head, and then I was ready to go back out there. And we got two goals. So, I take it.’
Easy to joke, of course, when part of a run like Slovakia is having in Milan. They won their Group when they scored a late goal in a loss against Sweden. That earned two days off between round-robin play and the quarterfinals. Now they have a 75 percent chance of winning a medal, as the semifinals winners advance to the gold medal game and the losers to the bronze medal game.
‘It’s big for our country, it’s big for all of our fans,’ Slafkovsky said. ‘I’m super excited to go back to semifinals after four years again. An even bigger tournament and a great opportunity for us. We just got to make sure we’re prepared and we got to play good. And wherever it takes us, it’ll take us there.’
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