Playing for their country, not the money

If the Slovak national ice hockey team play in the quarterfinals of the current World Championships in the Czech Republic, each player will receive about €10,000 from the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), according to Hospodárske novinydaily. The only reward money the team can get is for a top ranking at the tournament. "The reward for advancing to the quarterfinals is around €500,000," said Vladimir Baluška, economic executive at the Slovak Ice Hockey Federation (SZLH). According to him, the reward amount hasn't changed in recent years. Three years ago - at the joint Sweden-Finland tournament - the winner got €700,000 and the runner-up €613,000. This is different from Slovak footballers, who get rewards even for preparatory matches - for a win or a tie - or tennis players at the Davis Cup and FED Cup, who get rewards for participation worth thousands of euro. Ice hockey players can win all seven matches in the preliminary round but still get nothing for this.

In ice hockey sixty-five percent of the financial reward is for the team, and the other 35 percent goes to the Slovak ice hockey federation. So, according to the most probable scenario, the team would get €325,000 from the quarterfinals reward. "Players don't go to tournaments for rewards. Most of them don't even know that there is any financial reward," said ice hockey manager Marcel Sakač. More valuable than the reward money is the opportunity to be noticed at the tournament, giving the players a better chance of obtaining contracts in elite leagues. "The tournament is about good results first and foremost. Then there is the possibility to advance one's career," said Jan Laco, the Slovak team's number one goaltender. In the past professional players from the North American League often didn't want to play at the World Championships out of fear of injury, which would affect contracts that would not be renewed. Nowadays players aren't afraid, and they even want the chance to be noticed even at the end of a contract with a club from the North American league. "At least they can show themselves to people from elite European clubs," said ice hockey manager Vladimir Vujtek Jr., the son of the Slovak team coach.