For exactly one month now, Ivan Demidov has been the talk of the town (and rightly so). After all, he’s the next big thing in Montreal.
But right now, there’s another young winger who’s getting a lot of attention: Juraj Slafkovsky. The man who just beat a triathlete in a canoe race also signed a huge contract a few weeks ago.
This pact, as he confessed to Slovak hockey insider Tomas Prokop, he hasn’t given it much thought. “Maybe it will happen later,” he told the journalist. For now, he’s concentrating on his summer training.
He goes to the gym every day, skates two to four times a week and much more. He’ll be ready for the season, in any case.
But where he puts most of his attention is his desire to get better and show the fans that he deserves this contract. Because the contract will be pocketed (barring a buyout, of course), but he hasn’t necessarily proven that he deserves that much money, yet…
The organization and the Slovak have a very specific plan.
They want to feel a constant progression in the player. And so far, it’s looking good. In the second half of the 2023-2024 season, he didn’t stop improving, so much so that at the end of the year, he scored his first career hat trick.
According to Prokop’s recent posts on X, Slafkovsky is also very excited about the prospect of representing his country at the Winter Olympics. He’d like to take part in the qualifiers next month.
But, as he sees it, he doesn’t have the final say. The Canadian will have to give his consent.
I don’t see why the Habs would refuse his participation.
After all, it would give him a great international experience against the best players in the world, and Montreal knows full well that he’s one of his nation’s best and most popular players.
