The reason why measuring both clubs is a special thing for him? In 2012, as head coach, Pavel Hynek led the Pardubice hockey players to their last championship title in the extra league.
And now Pavel Hynek is experiencing the aforementioned series from the other side. He is the general director of HC Verva Litvínov. And the team’s staff includes elite players who recently came to the north of Bohemia precisely under Hynk’s managerial leadership.
So let’s recall the milestones of Hynk’s career. In addition to gold with the Czech team at the World Cup in 2001 as Jaroslav Holík’s assistant, his hockey resume also includes two championship titles with Sparta Prague also as an assistant coach, but above all the triumph in the highest competition with Pardubice as head coach in the title-winning 2012 A year later, he saved the White Tigers from Liberec in the extra league in a playoff.
As a sports journalist, I have known Pavel Hynek since the beginning of his coaching career. After the dominance of Pardubice, with whom he reached the top of the extra-league, he was the object of media interest. He told me how he experienced it at the time in an interview for Právo.
“I remain falsely modest,” he smiled. “But if I say it with a little exaggeration, we had five minutes of fame. And life went on. You can’t live on memories. Of course, the atmosphere in the period around winning the title was beautiful, but gradually we focused again on work,” he recalled.
He absorbed completely different feelings in Liberec. The fans there still remember how the White Tigers fought to stay.
“At first, I didn’t believe that we wouldn’t be able to do it in the play-off. In the decisive match, we played Mladá Boleslav, who had experienced players and I did not look at them as a first league team at the time, even though they went to the playoffs from a lower competition. At that time, it already had a staff on the edge of the extra league, which was confirmed,” summarizes Hynek.
He knows what top hockey is all about.
The coaching period from those years 2012 and 2013 meant a lot of experience for Hynek.
“I wouldn’t even want to compare the two seasons or tell any stories and emotions. You always want to win in the playoffs and go as far as possible. If it doesn’t work out, a streak ends. Whereas in a playoff, a lot of other things are tied to the results. The burden is much heavier, I won’t go into detail. Every coach or player has to experience that to know what it’s all about,” he nodded his head.
“Lifting the cup for the champion is the icing on the cake, with euphoria and joy as the end of the season. In a mastered barrage, after long-term anxiety, a huge sense of relief prevails,” he offered his view.
Perhaps it was Liberec’s knowledge from the fight for extra league affiliation that gradually started the club on its way to the title in 2016.
Pavel Hynek then returned to the north of Bohemia through the first league Slavia Prague, the ambitious Mountfield Hradec Králové and engagement in Sochi in the KHL. Only instead of Liberec to another extra-league address to Litvínov, where he already worked as an assistant to coach František Výborny in 2002-2004. He was then a coach and sports manager in the first league Slovan Ústí nad Labem for three years. “I know Northern Bohemia well,” he says of his stays in this region.
