I stole the cup home, says Hrubec after his next title

I didn’t sleep much, it was stormy. We stayed at the stadium until half past four in the morning, families and friends came to the dressing room, luckily it’s big. Champagne was splashed everywhere, drinking, celebrating. I’m glad no one was hurt. And when I was leaving the freezer, I stole the cup and took it home in a taxi. Then we continued with a friend on the terrace of his apartment. The guys caught me on the way home, so I went back to town. At six in the morning. Then we celebrated in the harbor at Lake Zurich, sitting on the pier. At half past seven in the evening it hit me, I took a taxi and slept until the next day.

I had to return it. They are lucky I lent it to them!

Our best all season. The saying goes, go for it and win it… But game seven is a bit daunting. However, we flew at them in such a style that I did not recognize us. We outshot them 19:6 in the first period. We played so fantastically throughout that it was only a matter of time before we scored. It could happen that some unfortunate rebound would come and we could lose, that was the only thing that scared me. But as we pursued it, luck was also on our side. We scored one goal, the second in the middle of the third period. And I was already thinking that maybe it could work out.

It is nice. The coach was pleased. He said that I always won the promotion match, the decisive one, with zero. And it was also true in the final.

I knew the coach had to do it. I didn’t go out of the gate thinking that I would catch badly. We came there to hand it over, we donated it to them. They deservedly won. The sixth game, on the other hand, was one of the worst in the season, so I didn’t deal with the substitution. In fact, I wasn’t even sad that we lost because it wasn’t even close to winning the game. I thought maybe we’d pull our heads together and show what we’re capable of. And that happened.

In everything. Really. Don’t make it sound stupid, but we had the best power plays, the best fades, maybe even bulls, time in the zone, earned reels. The coach told us before the final: Statistically, we are the best in everything, now we just have to prove it! Which is very tricky. Different circumstances matter in the playoffs. I’m glad we confirmed it. It is not easy to win the regular season and even the playoffs.

You need a lot of luck to get one, any goalkeeper will tell you that. How many times in the regular season did I lose it due to an unfortunate goal, a rebound from the skate, I got four possessions. I said after the regular season to my coach: Everything is great, win stats, but I only have one shutout! Him: Maybe you’re saving them for the playoffs. And yes, too. That was the only thing that calmed me down.

It makes me happy. Even more so that I managed to do it for the second time in a row, because the competition in the goal area is great here. Especially after the arrival of players from the KHL, the league has improved tremendously. That’s what makes those stats more valuable.

He played a fantastic playoff, he was their absolute best player. I know him from Omsk, where we played together, that was lucky. He is very strong. When he took the puck and drove at my defender, I knew he was going to get to the goal anyway and create a chance anyway. I always had to be ready. And eight times out of ten he went through defenders, he was like a bulldozer. An extremely valuable player. I then told him that he was cheating on me. And he laughed: But I got one for you! Me to him: I thought you were a defender, that’s not you! For a while I lost track of which player I had. He went down to the full-back position on the power play instead of hanging around the goal. And he whistled it to me there.

The celebrations after the match were huge. The roller skaters deliberately planted a piece of guardrail so that people could flock to the ice behind us. And I don’t really like cramped spaces or when there are too many people somewhere. I don’t mind them if they’re not around me, even if there are a thousand of them behind the bar. Suddenly, everyone was reaching for the ice, for the cup. It felt like a tsunami coming at you, a wave of people. What now? I immediately grabbed my son, drove against the fans and almost smashed them so that the boy wouldn’t get lost somewhere or get trampled. I took it to the woman, I put it in the hands of my dad, who came to the game with my father-in-law, so he was safe for a while. Then there was no stopping it, crowd madness.

The best thing about her is traveling. Thanks to our position on the map, the longest journey to Geneva takes three hours. And that’s totally cool. Even in the final, we didn’t go a day ahead. We kept our home games, that was very important.

Everyone is different. The first one was very important for me, that it was in Třinec, after a long seven-year wait. He was key for me in terms of my career. After that I calmed down, I thought, yes, now I have a degree. He moved me. The KHL was a hugely high-quality competition at the time, so I respect it from a sporting point of view. And the Swiss one, for me, that was pressure that I created on myself. I said: I caught three leagues, let’s win all three! I won’t pretend, but the day before the game – we had two days off between them – I was really nervous. The worst part was the wait. Killing. I didn’t know what to do, I walked around like a caged tiger waiting for it to break out. Then we went to the game and the classic routine started, when you don’t know if you are going to final number 7 or game 24 in the regular season.

I would like the Swedish league, but I’m older now and the guys told me that traveling there is more difficult, the distances are much longer. I still have two more years on my contract in Switzerland, so that’s just thinking out loud. Otherwise, there is no point in looking so far ahead.

We have sixteen goalies and I will deal with it now, there was no time in the playoffs. Swiss goalkeepers help in Switzerland, Czech goalkeepers in the Czech Republic. Here we had zero year and we have to take the first step, find someone to help. Paradoxically, it’s more complicated in Switzerland because the insurance here is so good that it covers everything.

Personally, I think that as far as the goal area is concerned, the boot does not push us there. All three goalkeepers are great.