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Think about being Martin and Monika Honzek throughout Saturday’s pre-game introductions on the Saddledome.
With music thumping, a smoke-machine pumping and 19,000-and-some light-up bracelets flashing in unison, they watched their 19-year-old son Sam step onto the ice, the rookie left-winger elevating his follow acknowledge an adoring crowd. As his identify was introduced, the C of Pink roared.
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Honzek’s proud dad and mom will need to have been pinching themselves. That they had arrived yesterday from Trencin, Slovakia, the place Martin works as a police officer and Monika as a hairdresser and the place each had been awake at 4 a.m. to look at his NHL debut earlier this week in Vancouver.
“They’re dwelling my dream, too, once they come to go to,” Sam beamed after Saturday’s morning skate. “They’re actually pumped. My dad, since he received within the automotive on the airport, he was taking footage everywhere in the metropolis of every part doable. Typical dad. He’s excited. I believe it’s going to be a superb first NHL sport for my mother and for my dad to look at and witness. It’s gonna be good. My second sport within the NHL and the home-opener for Flames, so it’s going to be unreal for them.”
Martin, Monika and the remainder of Saturday’s boisterous crowd had been witnessing a comparatively uncommon feat.
Sam Honzek remains to be two months shy of his twentieth birthday. Going again the previous 25 years, he’s simply the sixth teenager to earn a spot within the Flames’ lineup for his or her first house sport of a brand new marketing campaign. He joins Rico Fata (1999), Oleg Saprykin (1999), Sean Monahan (2013), Sam Bennett (2015) and Matthew Tkachuk (2016) in an unique membership.
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Honzek is an unlikely addition to that record, a minimum of primarily based on what folks had been saying about him as just lately as mid-September. As he arrived in Calgary for coaching camp, he may have been a candidate for his personal ‘Imply Tweets’ phase, with some followers questioning approach too quickly if this power-forward-in-progress would grow to be a first-round bust. Yeah … at 19.
That fear was primarily based on an underwhelming stat-line in his injury-plagued ultimate junior marketing campaign with the WHL’s Vancouver Giants. It’s a story the higher-ups on the Saddledome had been actually conscious of. Head coach Ryan Huska even referenced it throughout the exhibition slate, saying: “I do know after final yr everybody was speaking about, ‘Oh, jeez, the place is that this Honzek man? Is he going to be a participant?’ Properly, he’s a participant.”
“I’m completely happy as a result of he went by means of a lot final yr and he got here in and he proved it to lots of people, to individuals who had been saying, ‘Properly, perhaps he’s not so good as they assume,’ ” stated Flames normal supervisor Craig Conroy, who introduced Honzek’s identify at No. 16 total within the 2023 NHL Draft. “I’m considering, ‘You haven’t even seen him but!’ I believe it’s a superb reminder for hockey followers, on the whole — give younger guys time. Not everyone is Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby. It takes time for younger gamers, and now we have to be affected person.”
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The Flames had been prepared to be far more affected person with Honzek.
It simply so occurs that he accelerated the timeline with an outstanding pre-season exhibiting, together with a team-high seven factors in tuneup motion.
“I checked in with him in the summertime and I bear in mind him saying, ‘Marty, I’m going to make that group,’ ” stated Flames growth coach Martin Gelinas. “Sitting on the opposite facet, I’m considering, ‘Jeez, that’s a troublesome job.’ You don’t wish to say to him, ‘That is going to be actually exhausting.’ However to his credit score, he utilized himself, he was pushed, he labored at it, he was grinding all summer season and he got here again and his health assessments had been among the greatest.”
Ah sure, the annual fitness-testing rigmarole supplied an early trace that Honzek was able to make a significant assertion.
Of the 64 dudes who reported for camp in Calgary, he had the very best outcome on the Wingate Check, a motorcycle dash that lasts for 10 seconds, though your ‘rating’ is predicated on peak energy over a six-second span. In keeping with Flames director of sport efficiency Rick Davis, it’s a measure of “acceleration capabilities or horsepower.” He referred to Honzek’s output as “elite.”
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“I’m happy with him as a result of if you wish to have success on this sport, it’s important to have the ability and prepared to grind off-ice. It’s a must to be prepared to spend the time and to do greater than everyone else within the gymnasium,” stated Gelinas, an professional on this subject since his personal dedication to his conditioning helped him to stay round for 1,273 NHL video games, at the moment the 88th-highest whole in league historical past. “What Sam did this summer season with Martin Pospisil, it was simply super. The quantity of hours that he spent within the gymnasium and on the ice, dedicated to essentially make an influence this yr at coaching camp, it was noticeable.”
Certainly, you couldn’t miss him at camp — in a great way.
And Martin and Monika weren’t going to overlook Saturday’s introduction. What a second it will need to have been for them.
“It’s a superb factor that I get this opportunity at 19 years outdated, at that younger age, to play the home-opener and make the NHL roster,” Honzek stated on Saturday morning. “It’s a giant deal for me and I wish to keep right here so long as I can and combat for my spot to carry on the group for the entire season. As a result of I do know I can play with these guys, that I can play on the NHL degree. That’s why I put all of the work in throughout the summer season. I wish to keep constant and present that I needs to be an NHL participant full-time.”
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