The sky was seemingly the limit, and a roster spot with Czechia, where he would get the chance to compete with many of the players he grew up idolizing, including Patrik Elias, Jaromir Jagr and Tomas Plekanec, was a sure thing.

Until it wasn’t.

During a game against the Los Angeles Kings on Dec. 19, 2013, Hertl went down following a knee-on-knee collision with Dustin Brown, sustaining an injury that resulted in surgery on his MCL and PCL.

His Olympic dream was on hold, though it should have come four years later.

But again, it didn’t, this time because the NHL did not send players to the Olympics in 2018 and 2022.

During that stretch, Hertl continued to have problems with his knees. He injured his right knee again in Game 2 of the 2016 Stanley Cup Final against the Pittsburgh Penguins, ultimately missing the rest of that series, which the Penguins won in six games. He also had surgery for a sprain in his right knee during the 2016-17 season, and season-ending surgery to repair damage to his knee in 2019-20.

Then in February 2024, just weeks before he was traded by the Sharks to the Golden Knights on March 8, Hertl had surgery to clean out loose cartilage in his left knee.

“I’ve had some unlucky injury history,” Hertl repeated.

But Hertl is healthy now, and with the NHL set to return to the Olympics for the first time in 12 years, he is burning with a desire to be with his countrymen in Italy.

“It’s a big thing, especially for me because I was going to [Sochi] and then I got hurt, and after that we didn’t play in the Olympics,” he said. “So, I never knew if I would get a chance to play under the five rings.”

In Italy, Hertl will be older and wiser, more emotionally weathered. He will also be a big part of a team that believes it has the goods to upset some of the marquee countries in the tournament.

Look at what Hertl has been doing this season on a nightly basis for the Golden Knights, who play the New York Islanders at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, SCRIPPS, TNT, SNP), and you can see the value he will bring to a Czechia team that will be a mix of NHL and European players.