For former NHLers in Milan, the Olympics are a last chance to earn one more opportunity – The Athletic
MILAN — Dominik Kahun wasn’t exactly anonymous in the early days of his pro career. He was a pretty good player on a very good team, a solid contributor on a Munich club that won the Deutsche Eishockey Liga championship in his first three full pro seasons. He averaged a goal every four games and was nearly a point-a-game player in 2017-18.
But he was never his team’s top scorer. He never cracked the top 10 in scoring in the league. He was a little undersized at 5-foot-11. He was destined to become one of those countless solid European pros whose name never reaches North American shores.
Oh, there were occasionally NHL scouts at Munich’s games, but they usually weren’t there just to see Kahun specifically. He was mostly faceless, largely nameless.
But the Olympics were coming. And for the first time since 1994, the NHL wasn’t coming with them.
Kahun knew what it could mean.
“I was definitely thinking about the NHL in 2018,” he said. “There were a couple of scouts coming to those games in Munich, but I knew the Olympics was going to be a big tournament for me. If I could show myself there, I would have a chance.”
Kahun made the national team and, with the playing field leveled by the NHL’s decision to sit this one out, Germany took home the silver medal in South Korea. Kahun had a key assist in the qualifying round against Switzerland, a goal in a quarterfinal upset of Sweden, an assist in a semifinal win over Canada and a goal in a gut-wrenching overtime loss to the Russians in the gold-medal game.
And while NHL players weren’t there, NHL general managers were watching.
“Sometimes I wish I would put less pressure on myself, but the guys and the family who know me the best, they know that I put the most pressure on myself,” Kahun said. “And I had it in my mind that it was going to be a big tournament for me. I had to play good to get noticed.”
Kahun ended up signing with the Chicago Blackhawks just a few months after the Olympics, and general manager Stan Bowman cited his performance in Pyeongchang as a big reason for it. He suddenly had other suitors, too, so Chicago gave him an incentive-laden deal that also included an out clause to allow him to go back to Europe if he didn’t make the NHL.
Kahun had a modest NHL career, posting 34 goals and 83 points in 186 games with the Blackhawks, Penguins, Sabres and Oilers. He’s been playing in Switzerland since 2021-22. Now he’s back in the Olympics with Germany and wondering if he can do it again.
After all, he’s only 30 years old. And the world is watching once again.
“You never know what can happen, obviously,” he said. “I’m just coming to (Milan) with a free mind. I’m always trying to do my best and play my best game. What matters most is our team success. But if the team does well, it’s good for everybody individually. You never know.”
Kahun is one of several recent ex-NHLers in these Olympics. The Czechs have Dominik Kubalik and Ondřej Kaše. Slovakia has Tomáš Tatar, Latvia has Rūdolfs Balcers, Switzerland has Denis Malgin and Dean Kukan and France has Pierre-Édouard Bellemare. And aside from Bellemare, who’s living out his dream at the end of his career at 40 years old, the Olympics are an opportunity — almost certainly their last opportunity — to catch the eye of the NHL and have a chance of returning to the world’s best and most lucrative league.
Dominik Kubalik, who last played in the NHL for Ottawa, is only 30 and wants to prove himself on the Olympic stage. (RvS.Media / Robert Hradil / Getty Images)
“I can’t say I want to prove people wrong or something like that, but obviously you would like to have a good tournament and make them think, ‘You know what? He’s still capable of doing this,’” Kubalik said.
Like Kahun, Kubalik found his way to Chicago in the wake of the 2018 Olympics (he scored twice for the Czech Republic), only a year later. In less than 18 months, he went from being a nervous 22-year-old first-timer who didn’t understand what the national team meant by a “business-class” flight to being in the NHL. Yes, the 25 goals and 32 assists he put up with HC Ambri-Piotta in Switzerland the following season helped, but the Olympics first put him on the NHL’s radar.
Kubalik last played in the NHL with the Ottawa Senators in 2023-24, posting 11 goals and four assists in 74 games. But he’s only three years removed from a 20-goal season in Detroit, and he was a Calder Trophy finalist just six seasons ago — trailing only Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes in the final voting — when he burst onto the scene in Chicago with 30 goals. He’s back in Switzerland now, fourth in the National League with 21 goals in just 43 games.
Kubalik is only 30, and he can still play. He knows it. And he wants everyone else to know it, too.
“Sure,” he said, “But it’s more about proving that a small country like us, the Czech Republic, can prove to the other countries that we can do good.”
That’s a common mindset in Milan. Hockey is the ultimate team sport, they say, and the Olympics is the ultimate team event. It’s not about any one individual; it’s about representing everyone back home and playing for national pride. So turning the heads of NHL GMs over the next two weeks isn’t at the front of anyone’s minds.
But it’s there somewhere in the back.
“I don’t really look from an individual standpoint,” said Tatar, who in May signed a two-year contract with Zug in Switzerland — he and Kubalik are Zug’s top two scorers this season — after an excellent NHL career that included 927 games played and six 20-goal campaigns. “We’re here as a team and we’re looking for success. (But) if the team will find success, the individuals will stand out.”
Players are wary of looking too thirsty, of course. After all, it’s a little gauche to be openly lobbying to leave your own club team. But while young European players can only imagine what life in the NHL is like, ex-NHLers know exactly what they’re missing. Among players, the Swiss National League is the consensus best European league to play in — the pay is good, the travel is easy, the cities are cosmopolitan and the quality of competition is high — but no league in the world compares with the NHL. The pay, the amenities, the life of luxury — it’s simply on its own plane of existence. There can be plenty of reasons to prefer Europe to the NHL, whether it’s family or national pride or even a more palatable level of fame and pressure.
But the overwhelming majority of players would jump at a chance to play in the NHL — or return to it.
“I’ve talked to people and told them if there would be another opportunity for me to go overseas and try it again, I would do that, for sure,” said Balcers, a winger who last played for the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2022-23 and has been a productive player for Zurich in the National League for three seasons. “It doesn’t matter if it’s this tournament or a tournament (like the World Championships) in May, I’m trying to play my best every night. And if I play good, people might notice and something could come up. But for sure, this is a big stage with all the best players. You want to showcase your best.”
Kaše is in his third season back in the Czech Extraliga following seven seasons in the NHL with the Anaheim Ducks, Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs and Carolina Hurricanes (the latter a one-game stint in 2022-23). At 30 years old and with only modest NHL success — he spiked a 20-goal season in 2017-18 with Anaheim, and had 14 goals in 50 games with Toronto in 2021-22 — he certainly faces long odds to earn another shot at the NHL.
When asked if he still entertained dreams of returning to North America, he paused for several seconds to mull it before saying, “It’s a very tough question; I’m not sure I can answer it.” But whether he’s still harboring NHL hopes or not, he’s not sweating it. There’s too much at stake for Czechia in Milan.
“I’m not thinking about it right now,” he added. “I’m just thinking about the tournament. Try to the best, and we will see what happens after the tournament.”
Whether any of these players actually gets back to the NHL remains to be seen. Most, if not all of them, are long shots to return. But for the next week-plus, they’ll get one more chance to play against the very best in the world. If they prove they can still hang, well, anything’s possible.
Because the world is watching.
“It’s great to see all these guys who I used to play against, now at the level of the Olympic Games,” Tatar said. “It’s very exciting for all of us.”
