(Bratislava, Slovakia)

The massive hilltop Wawel Castle in Krakow is a common destination for tourists in Poland. It was originally built in the 14th century and was repeatedly expanded over the years as it hosted a long succession of Polish rulers.  Because of our extremely tight schedule, it was not possible to visit the entire complex or even all parts of the buildings that we did visit.  However, we did at least get a flavour of Polish history and the vast area covered by Poland and Lithuania in the past.

Time constraints also forced us to eat on the run…but, in this case, we happily stumbled upon a take-out restaurant that served up the kind of Polish specialties that I had been hoping to find.  The sausage looked tempting but I opted for bigos (a tasty cabbage-based hunter’s stew with all kinds of interesting ingredients) instead.

From Poland, we moved on to Bratislava, Slovakia.  I think the hockey game in Bratislava was probably my favourite of the tour, with the Budapest game (details in a future post) being an extremely close second.  Some of our players had played the Slovak team last year at a tournament in Germany but were soundly defeated and it was apparently quite discouraging.  This year’s game was only a friendly match but some of our players were very motivated to improve on the outcome from last year.

Even without that backdrop, however, this game was still something special.  We were playing at Bratislava’s impressive Zimný štadión Ondreja Nepelu, also known as the Slovnaft Arena (see photo at top of this posting).  It was completely rebuilt for the 2011 IIHF World Championships and accommodates more than 10,000 spectators.   It is state-of-the-art in every respect and is the home arena of HK Slovan Bratislava, who play in the KHL (the second best hockey league in the world).

We arrived at the player entrance and were astonished by the spacious and extensively equipped dressing rooms.  Our hosts also provided us with plenty of beverages and souvenirs.  On the Olympic-sized ice, the game was preceded by the Canadian and Slovakian national anthems.  It was really special to hear “O Canada” while wearing a Team Canada jersey – even though this technically wasn’t a national team, we did have players from B.C. to Newfoundland on our roster.  I now have some idea what it must feel like to appear for Canada at the Olympics or World Championships.   With music blaring between whistles and a high-tech LED scoreboard, we really felt like we were in “the big time”.

While it is hard to pinpoint the exact reason, I think I played my best game of the tour in Bratislava.  The wide-open ice, the “spectacle”, the emotion of this long-awaited rematch…everything seemed to feel right.  Time seemed to slow down just a little bit and I felt like I was in total control of my game.  Maybe, in some parallel universe, this was where I was meant to play hockey?

There were also some interesting Slovak touches to the game:  everybody who scored was immediately and ceremoniously rewarded with a shot of a blueberry beverage of unknown local origin.    As the game went on, the “rewards” were expanded to players who earned assists or just looked like they might need a “reward”.  Another great thing about the game is that I don’t recall any cheapshots or animosity between the teams.  Everybody did their best but it wasn’t at the expense of anybody else.

As for the result:  Bratislava looked formidable in the warm-up and two players in particular (#66 and #69) were clearly very strong.  We scored a couple of early goals but Bratislava roared back and the situation began to look dire as several of our players succumbed to (accidental) injuries.  It seemed like just a matter of time before Bratislava’s star players would “turn it up a notch” and ensure victory for the Slovak team.  We rose to the challenge, however, and eventually prevailed by an 8-5 margin.   More so than in any previous game, we seemed to really click as a team.  It also didn’t hurt that our goalkeeper continued his run of stellar games!

After the game, we didn’t feel like leaving the ice.  We wanted the moment to last just a little bit longer!  As the arena staff wasn’t too pushy about us leaving the ice, we took lots of team pictures to commemorate the game.  I hope to be able to share some of these in a future post.

While this was a great night, there is still much more to come.  Future posts will include a little bit about Bratislava itself…and the exciting end of the tour in Budapest, Hungary!