This is Jaroslav Spacek’s sixth Olympic games – three as a player, two as a coach and now one as a dad.
It is fair to say that while there is a lot more free time for things like sightseeing and shopping when you’re an Olympic dad, there are also a lot more nerves watching your son play in his first Olympic tournament.
“I'm more nervous, but I will have a beer and I will get okay,” Jaroslav said with a laugh.
Born in Columbus where his father was a defenceman for the Blue Jackets, David Spacek’s formative hockey memories are from his father’s time in Montreal with the Canadiens.
“Mostly I usually wanted to go to the wives’ lounge and play mini-sticks with all the other kids, but my mom always made me watch the first period, so I was not pleased with that,” David said.
Did he use the time to study the way his father played the same position he now plays for both the Minnesota Wild’s American Hockey League affiliate and Czechia at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics? Not exactly.
“No, I was just eating popcorn,” David said.
That doesn’t mean David hasn’t enjoyed a top-level education from one of the most storied players in Czechia hockey history, an education that has spanned the years and continues to this day. Or more to the point, continues on an almost daily basis.
“We're really close. We talk about hockey almost every day, and he watches all the games from home, so he goes to bed very late, and we just talk about the games. If I have a bad game or a good game, so he usually just texts me something small,” David, 22, said.
What if there’s no text?
“Yeah, that's bad news,” David joked.
Jaroslav, who won a gold medal as part of a seminal win at Nagano 1998, the first Olympics featuring National Hockey League players, and later earned bronze at Torino 2006, has stepped away from day-to-day coaching and now manages the hockey program in his hometown of Plzen. That means overseeing some 20 different coaches from U20 all the way down to the youngest players.
But his biggest role, or rather dual role, remains being both coach and a dad to David, who earlier this season, played his first NHL games with the Minnesota Wild, the team that selected David 153rd overall in 2022.
“So, we talk every day about the games, like what happened, just a little chat,” Jaroslav said. “I always bring him a couple of situations, like good ones. I try to bring more good ones than the bad ones, but obviously if that’s what happens, you have to tell him, but I always want to see how he sees things. That's more important for me. Because he's on the ice.”
Those are the days Jaroslav is wearing the coaching hat.
Then there are the days he’s wearing the dad hat.
Like the day the family was on a beach vacation when former NHLer Jocelyn Thibault called Jaroslav to tell him that Sherbrooke Phoenix of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, which is partly owned by Thibault, was drafting David.
Knowing his son was preparing to leave to pursue his hockey dreams, Jaroslav began weeping.
Then he grabbed a beer before sharing the news.
“He was asking ‘Why are you crying? Like, what's going on?’ I was, ‘You got drafted,’” Jaroslav recalled with a laugh.
As David grew older, the first-period popcorn gave way to his own love the game and, by extension, his understanding of the kind of profile his father has in Czechia.
“When I’m getting older it comes into my head, like wow, he did a lot of stuff in his career, so I would say each year I respect him more and more, I guess,” David said.
For a time, when he was spending a lot of time in North America, Jaroslav kept his Olympic medals safely stored in a bank. Now that he’s back in Plzen, his home features all kinds of memorabilia from his long career, including the medals in a glass case.
Last summer when David shared that he was going to be on Team Czechia, Jaroslav helped his son get in the best shape possible knowing what was ahead in Milan.
“I said, ‘You want to be in this tournament. So do whatever it takes to get here. This is the tournament you want to play in,” Jaroslav said.
There are all kinds of intersecting narratives when it comes to David’s presence on the Czechia Olympic squad and his father’s significant Olympic presence.
One common thread is Team Czechia assistant coach Tomas Plekanec, who played internationally with Jaroslav as well as being his teammate in Montreal with the Canadiens.
“I met David when he was six years old in Montreal,” Plekanec said after Team Czechia skated on Saturday. “It’s kind of funny now to see him now being one of the players who made the Olympics and me being here as a coach.”
They are different players, father and son, but both have much to recommend them, Plekanec said. Specifically, he praised David’s calmness in a variety of situations.
“He’s a confident player. He plays like a veteran basically and he gets better every game,” Plekanec said.
As for David’s decorated father, Plekanec is succinct in assessing Jaroslav’s place in the game in Czechia.
“Obviously he’s one of the gold generation of our hockey history,” Plekanec said. “He’s a legend.”
(Feature photo courtesy of Getty Images)