Peter Bondra

Born in Soviet Ukraine to a Slovakian father and a Polish mother, Peter Bondra got his start in ice hockey with HK Poprad before joining TJ VSŽ Košice of the Czechoslovak First Ice Hockey League for the 1986-87 season. He remained with them through 1990, when he was drafted by the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Washington Capitals, where he would remain through most of the 2003-04 season, at which point he was traded to the Ottawa Senators. During that time, he also played a few games with his old club, now HC Košice, in the new Slovak Extraliga, as well as with the Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League.

Bondra made his major international début for newly-independent Slovakia at the 1996 World Cup, where his nation was seventh. Two years later, he was 10th in the tournament at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. He then won two medals – gold in 2002 and bronze in 2003 – at the World Championships, before finishing fifth at his second Olympics in 2006. During the 2004-05 NHL lockout, he spent a few games with HK Tatravagónka ŠKP Poprad of the Extraliga, and ended up with the Atlanta Thrashers upon his return to the NHL. His spent his final season, 2006-07, with the Chicago Blackhawks, and later served as General Manager of the Slovak national team, including at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 2016.