Hertl finally healthy, on cusp of delayed Olympic dream with Czechia

NEWARK, N.J. -- Tomas Hertl is pumped for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, he just doesn’t want to jinx it.

“It's really exciting, but at the same time, for me, because I have some unlucky injury history, so for me, I'm just taking it day to day,” the Vegas Golden Knights forward said last week following a session at the New Jersey Devils' practice rink.

You could almost see Hertl looking at the wooden locker behind him, fighting the urge to knock on it for good luck after he finished speaking.

Instead, he talked about how his mind remains rooted in the present rather than wandering toward the compelling thoughts about the possibility of playing for Czechia come February. He says he even refrains from talking to his fellow countrymen on opposing teams about the tournament, which will include NHL players for the first time since 2014.

Hertl, 32, has featured regularly on Czechia’s national team, though never at the Olympics. He has competed at the IIHF World Junior Championship twice and the IIHF World Championship four times, most recently in 2022.

But Hertl was supposed to be a budding young star at the Sochi Olympics in 2014. A burgeoning power forward (6-foot-3, 220 pounds), Hertl, then just 20 years old, had turned heads as a rookie with the San Jose Sharks, putting up 25 points, including a stellar 15 goals, in his first 35 games while playing alongside future Hall of Famer Joe Thornton.

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.

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Hertl is fourth on the Golden Knights in scoring with 22 points (13 goals, nine assists) in 28 games. He’s also been asked to emerge as more of a leader on the team, mentoring forward Pavel Dorofeyev, who is in his third full season with the Golden Knights and is often on the same line and power-play unit as Hertl.

“[From] when he got here, he’s heathier now than he was,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “He had a knee injury he had to play through. I think his pace is better because of that. He is just more comfortable in his skin with the team, how we play, what we demand of our centers, so he’s become a better 200-foot player.

“Offensively, he’s still the same player. He hangs on to the puck, it’s hard to get it from him. He goes to the dirty areas. Power play is a benefit to him, because if he’s not our No. 1 option, he’s 1b, him and 'Pav.' Going into games knowing he is going to get an opportunity to score excites him.”

The opportunity to potentially find glory with Czechia also excites him.

Hertl was just four years old when Czechia won its only gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, the first featuring NHL players.

That team, anchored by Jagr, Robert Reichel, Vladimir Ruzicka, Roman Hamrlik and Hall of Fame goalie Dominik Hasek, is still talked about reverently. As such, even though Hertl does not remember the games, the stories have been repeated so many times throughout his life that he can place the mental images.

“The goal is always to bring a medal home,” Hertl said. “It brings the country together. It’s about hockey. If you win, nobody talks about politics or anything, everybody is excited about that one thing.”