Ziga Jeglic has had an interesting career. He is still only 28 years old, but when you start your hockey career off by playing against Anze Kopitar, it can take you quite far. Still, growing up in a country with only seven (yes, 7!) rinks has its obvious challenges.
Starting off in the Slovenian league, he saw brief stints in EBEL, Allsvenskan, Liiga, and the DEL (with a championship win with Ingolstadt) before landing in the KHL with Slovan Bratislava.
While the NHL is still a dream at this point, many of his dreams have come true, the biggest being the experience of the Sochi Olympics with his country getting some surprising wins in the process. While the DEL championship is high on the list of accomplishments, that qualification for the Olympics last year was right there with it.
“Denmark had like nine NHL players,” Jeglic says, thinking back to their surprising win in the Olympic qualification round, “but we had Kopitar.”
While speaking about the Olympics and the participation of NHL players in general, and Ovechkin in particular, Jeglic seems to imply that Kopitar would be another player that would ask for a leave from his NHL club in order to go to South Korea to participate in the Games.
Jeglic touches briefly on the problems with payments when playing in the KHL, but also acknowledges that you’ll always get paid in the end. It’s an interesting interview with a player from a small — but proud — country that gets to play in the KHL.
