PRAGUE — Always smiling, always as friendly as possible, the feeling you get with Tomáš Hertl is that he never has a bad day.
“He’s always happy,” said former San Jose Sharks teammate William Eklund.
But Hertl was not happy after last season ended.
It took him a while to get over it.
Not just the rest of the body part. The resting part of the mind.
Hertl is a proud hockey player who performed at a high level for 11 years in San Jose. But after debuting late last season for the Vegas Golden Knights and recording four points in six regular-season games, Hertl just couldn’t find that powerful, down-low game during a one-goal, 14-shot final that ended with the Golden . Cavaliers suffering a first round exit to the Dallas Stars.
“I wasn’t good at all,” Hertl said at last month’s NHL media tour in his home country of the Czech Republic.
Hertl understands why, how difficult it is for him to accept. He was coming off knee surgery, then suddenly had to acclimate to a new team for the first time in his career: many, many new linemates, including nine different line combinations with 11 different players, and new systems.
These guys may be professionals, but they’re not robots, and change is hard.
As Eklund said, Hertl “was Saint Joseph.”
“I know I can be better, and I will,” said Hertl, who was outscored 5-0 in 111 even-strength minutes while on the ice in the playoffs.
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Golden Knights optimistic for future with Tomáš Hertl after a disappointing postseason
One person who can relate?
Jack Eichel.
Traded to Vegas after seven years with the Buffalo Sabres, Eichel didn’t feel like his normal self after debuting following an artificial disc replacement. He scored 14 goals and 25 points in 34 games after debuting in February of 2022, but it was the next season where he averaged just under a point a game, scored 27 goals and then added another 26 points in the playoffs during the Stanley Cup from Vegas . to run
“I was in a similar situation,” Eichel said at last week’s NHL media tour in Las Vegas. “You get traded in the middle of the season, you come from an injury, you recover, and you try to get used to living in a new place being in a new environment. Here’s a guy who spent his entire career in San Jose, and all of a sudden now he’s thrown into a whole new mix.
“He’s trying to establish himself because of what made him successful as a player. At the same time, he tries to fit in with our group. So anyone who knows him knows that he’s like a phenomenal person. And he fits right off the ice, but, he’s trying to get used to a new system and maybe a different role than he might have been.
“So I would expect him to come in and be the Tomáš Hertl that we’ve seen for how many years he’s been playing. We have a lot of confidence in him. And I know he had a tremendous summer of training and recovery. It’s not easy to pull off an injury. I think he’s going to be a huge part of our team this year.”
Jack Eichel celebrates his short-handed goal against the Dallas Stars in Game 3 of the first round as Tomáš Hertl, far right, beams from the penalty box. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Kelly McCrimmon couldn’t agree more.
“He got into six regular-season games, which was a tough way to try to hit the ground running with a new team when you get the playoffs against a really good team like Dallas,” the Golden Knights general manager said. The Athletics. “Tomáš would certainly be more critical of his play than we are. But I also believe starting fresh at training camp will be really beneficial for him.”
While Hertl is now 30 years old and Vegas fans have the luxury of rooting for a franchise that is always in win-now mode, McCrimmon didn’t just trade for Hertl for the short term. He is under contract through 2029-30 and the Golden Knights have him at a bargain price of $6.75 million per year because the Sharks retained 17 percent of his salary and cap hit.
So while Hertl may have gotten off to a rusty start, he’s worked hard this offseason to get healthy, regain strength and come into Vegas with a fresh mind and body.
Off the ice, he’s loved his time so far in Las Vegas, buying a house with his wife, Aneta, hitting it off with captain Mark Stone while Stone was recovering from a torn spleen, and feeling comfortable with the coaching staff, especially assistant Joel. Ward, his former teammate in San Jose.
“He’s going to have a really important role on our team and he’s going to have a lot of responsibility,” McCrimmon said. “We would hope he plays as well for us as he did against us because he was a player we looked up to a lot. And really high character, size, strength.
“We felt at the time of the trade that he was a little bit different than what we had in terms of just his ability around the net, under the goal line. He’s really strong in those areas. So it complemented what we already had , and I think he’s going to be a really good player for us.”
To McCrimmon’s point, while with the Sharks, Hertl scored seven goals and 16 points in 27 regular-season games against the rival Golden Knights and a blistering nine goals and 13 points in 13 playoff games against his current team.
This is only part of the reason McCrimmon worked long and hard to get the complicated business off the ground.
“There were a lot of layers to it because of the immobility, because of (Sharks GM) Mike (Grier) dealing with his ownership, making that decision because he was a lifelong Shark,” McCrimmon said. “It was just a process that took quite a while to work. Then the retention was a whole other part of it. It was a different negotiation all on its own, almost, that was time-consuming mostly because the immobility (meaning) you deal with the agent for the player .”
Hertl expects to return to form this season and expects the Golden Knights, as long as they are healthy, to regain their form. Some critics are projecting a step back due to the loss of players like Jonathan Marchessault and Chandler Stephenson, but Hertl doesn’t see it that way.
“Some people say the changes will affect the team negatively, but I think we still have a strong core,” he said. “Obviously missing Marchy is huge. He is a huge goalscorer and an all-round star. In the short time I was there he was great in the room, very funny guy, lots of jokes, and everyone liked him.
“But we still have some of the best defenders in the league and also (Adin Hill) is proving how really good he is. The biggest change will be up front, so I want to show people that I can still perform like I did in San Jose, if not better. That said, I believe we will still be competitive and stay at the top.”
And that’s also what McCrimmon expects, as Pavel Dorofeyev, Brett Howden and perhaps Brendan Brisson step into bigger roles and Alexander Holtz and Victor Olofsson brought in.
“We like our team,” McCrimmon said. “We have really good centers, really good defense, strong in goal. We think we have an opportunity for some players on the wing to step into bigger roles with more responsibility.
“And don’t forget how we were founded. We were a team that gave guys more opportunity than the team they came from. And many of those players blossomed into really good players. So there’s that aspect to it for us. We have some players that we’ve brought in, some players within our organization that we think will round out our forward core. Our D, one through eight, are solid. Our purpose is solid. We would like better health; I think (that) would be a big thing for our team this year. But I’ve always found in my, I guess this is going into my eighth year, we’ve always been at our best when we have something to prove. That is some of the DNA of this organization. We, I think, have been at our best when that’s how we’re positioned.”
But McCrimmon and Hertl know that much of the success of Vegas will depend on Hertl, as Eichel said, the Tomáš Hertl of old.
That will happen, promised former Sharks teammate and fellow Manchester United fan Fabian Zetterlund.
“He’s going to be one of the best for Vegas, for sure,” Zetterlund said.
(Top photo of Tomáš Hertl by Derek Cain/Getty Images)
