Vítkovice - Czech ice hockey goaltender Dominik Hašek, 45, famous for his career in the National Hockey League (NHL), has become the oldest player to ever win the Czech Extraliga, the top-level hockey league of the Czech Republic.
Symbolically, Hašek plays for Pardubice, the team where he started his hockey career in the 1980s when the team played under the name Tesla. After winning two Czechoslovak league titles, Hašek moved to the NHL where he played for the Chicago Blackhawks, Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings and the Ottawa Senators. In the NHL, Hašek was considered one of the best goaltenders and most famous European players, earning the nickname "the Dominator".
From the Czech point of view though, his 15 minutes of fame came in the 1998 when he, together with Jaromír Jágr and other famous Czech players, won the Golden Medal from the hockey tournament in the Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan.
Interestingly, four of the players that today play for Pardubice were born after Hašek won the league titles in 1987 and 1989 as a player of Tesla Pardubice.
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Spectacular play-off
In 2009, Hašek signed a one-year contract in Pardubice, and helped the team to advance to the play-off, which uses the best-of-seven format.
After losing the very first play-off match against Třinec, Pardubice ended winning 12 matches in a row, beating Třinec in the quarterfinals, Liberec in the semifinals, and Vítkovice in the finals.
This means that Pardubice managed to win all but one of the games of the play-off.
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Also, for the first time in the Extraliga history, there are oversea NHL players in the winning team. Namely, they are Aaron MacKenzie, Jeff Jillson, Kevin Mitchell and Adam Pineault, with above all the latter earning much popularity among the Pardubice crowd thanks to his outstanding performance in the play-off.
Speaking of Pardubice's fandom: the average number of spectators at home matches in Pardubice in the 2009/10 season was nine thousand, Extraliga's highest. All four final matches were sold-out, which means 10,194 people for the matches played in Pardubice and 9,496 people for the matches played in Vítkovice.
