Pavol Regenda<\/a> is a likely scratch against the Calgary Flames on Thursday.<\/p>\n\u201c[It] gave me a lot of confidence coming back here, and even more motivation and more energy [to] finish the season strong, so we can have some run here,\u201d Regenda said of his Olympic experience. \u201cI want to make my [roster] spot, [a] safe spot\u2026 Be a valued player for the team. So, that\u2019s just my motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, it\u2019s been a tumultuous time for Regenda since leaving Italy. After losing the bronze medal game, the Slovakian players in North American leagues flew to New York (and couldn\u2019t even watch the gold medal game).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was only like 17 of us in the whole plane, so it was really comfortable,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody was sitting in business class. Really empty plane.\u201d<\/p>\n
In case you haven\u2019t heard, many Northeast states are under weather advisories from freezing temperatures and severe storms. That\u2019s why Team USA and Team Canada flew into Miami before players flew to their respective teams. Regenda was stuck in New York for two days with fellow Slovakians like the Calgary Flames\u2019 Martin Pospisil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hung out together, spent some more time, tried to go get some food, but all the restaurants are closed,\u201d Regenda shared. \u201cThen we tried to go to Manhattan: everything was closed there. We just [hung] out together. It was a nice time, tried to relax a little bit and spend more time with those guys.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I was like, \u2018just get me on a plane,\u2019 so I can be home, finally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regenda was home at 7 p.m. Tuesday night. After all that, even though Slovakia was one win away from their country\u2019s second ever men\u2019s ice hockey Olympic medal, Regenda now looks back fondly.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody was kind of frustrated, sad: we didn\u2019t finish as we wanted,\u201d Regenda said. \u201cYou\u2019re top four [after preliminaries], you want to finish with something on your neck. It was really sad. A couple guys [were] crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig names, big teams, and we have to be proud. Coming into the tournament, I don\u2019t think anybody in the world like believed [that] we [could] finish top four against players like this. So, I\u2019m proud of the team, of all the guys. I feel like people are proud of us too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the first practice with all the San Jose Sharks\u2019 Olympians participating, Pavol Regenda was surrounded by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[4173,93,91014,2369,10012,44531,88,90,89,98],"class_list":{"0":"post-194844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-martin-pospisil","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-olympics","13":"tag-pavol-regenda","14":"tag-san-jose","15":"tag-san-jose-headlines","16":"tag-san-jose-news","17":"tag-san-jose-sharks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}