{"id":454929,"date":"2026-02-11T22:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T22:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/454929\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T22:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T22:55:11","slug":"slovakia-stuns-finland-in-mens-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/454929\/","title":{"rendered":"Slovakia Stuns Finland In Men’s Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games<\/a> Men\u2019s Hockey tournament is officially underway, and San Jose Sharks forward Pavol Regenda and Slovakia started it off with a bang.<\/p>\n

Slovakia is improving in hockey, and Wednesday was proof of that. Slovakia opened its tourney with a hard matchup against Finland, a team full of NHLers. With the crowd heavily on its side, Slovakia beat the 2022 gold medalists (with no NHLers) 4-1.<\/p>\n

Before the Sharks\u2019 last game before the break, Regenda spoke at length about what Slovakia expected of its fans. Traveling to Milano Cortina is not difficult, so a large fan base is expected from Slovakia. Regenda said his entire family and his girlfriend are attending the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like an hour, 30 minutes flight. It\u2019s pretty close, really, really, really close. You can even drive, drive. It\u2019s like nine hours,\u201d Regenda said. \u201cSo it\u2019s hard with tickets, because I heard [the] arenas are not that huge. It\u2019s really close. [I] expect a lot of people are gonna come.\u201d<\/p>\n

The San Jose Sharks forward played with familiar linemates<\/a>. Regenda played with Calgary Flames<\/a> center Martin Pospisil and former Arizona Coyotes forward Milos Kelemen. The trio was listed as Slovakia\u2019s second line and deployed accordingly. Regenda finished the game with 15:28 time on ice, good enough for 11th on his team.<\/p>\n

Slovakia got two goals and an assist from Montreal Canadiens young star Juraj Slafkovsky. The former No. 1 pick has played in eight career Olympic games and scored nine goals.<\/p>\n

Regenda is on the second power-play unit for Slovakia. Since joining the San Jose Sharks, Regenda has made a living from being in front of the net. The winger provides size and has a nice finishing touch when there are rebounds available. He didn\u2019t finish with a point, but registered two shots in Wednesday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Slovakia\u2019s next game is on Friday against the host nation, Italy. Italy is playing Sweden\u2019s Alexander Wennberg<\/a> on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

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https:\/\/swifthockey.com\/REAL_MAX_MILLER<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 Winter Olympic Games Men\u2019s Hockey tournament is officially underway, and San Jose Sharks forward Pavol Regenda…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5127],"tags":[3189,5,4,1265,519,168,5306,5305,1780,8246,24660,15233,4094],"class_list":{"0":"post-454929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-pavol-regenda","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-sharks","14":"tag-sanjose","15":"tag-sanjosesharks","16":"tag-sharks","17":"tag-sharks-news","18":"tag-sj-sharks","19":"tag-team-finland","20":"tag-team-slovakia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116054466599292978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}