Ján Filc

"In particular, we, as a group, went and dismantled the street signs so that the people of Šalgovič would have more trouble finding those streets, we painted the road with white paint and with some slogans like "zachvátčiki damoj" and the like, because we used some of the Russian potential. Well, when my father saw me on the overpass on Baikalska, when we were trying to somehow convince the Russians to let them go home, I almost got a headache then. Because we somehow didn't perceive the danger as big as it really was. Because it was mainly in the center that it took place, basically, the shooting and the like in that period. So I remember this very well, and it actually carried over to the beginning in high school, because right away, a strike was declared by the students, and since I was the president of the class at the time when the team was being put together, so we intervened in some strike process expressing our opposition. And somehow I never changed my opinion, and to this day I am convinced that it should not have happened and that it was a huge mistake of that period."

"And I feel some kind of relaxation, that maybe the direction is also due to the influence of Perestroika, that it already indicated that maybe things will start to change a little differently. Then the culmination happened in November, which we all experienced very emotionally and we believed that it would be something very positive and special for society for a long time and especially for our offspring. And that's how we got really good at it, if I had to say so. Yes. How we all liked each other back then, how we somehow knew how to forgive each other and so on. And it was a beautiful period, I'm very happy about it... until now, when I see some of those pictures, pictures from that period, I get such a chill down my spine that how those things appeared then, how everything started to relax then and how we started to feel like we are important again, that we are not just some puppets somewhere on that chessboard."

"During that summer, we wanted to prepare some kind of joint training camp for those players, which would allow them to somehow train here during August and at the same time get to know each other better, because they were overseas then players of different generations. There were many of them who had not had the opportunity to meet before. They only met sporadically on the ice, when they exchanged hands and the like. And here, Ernest Bokroš, an expert on our Slovak hockey, who was my assistant, Dušan, who was an expert on the overseas environment, helped me a lot, and we actually put the team together. But what happened was what I was afraid of, that actually the players, as if right before they were supposed to meet, actually started to vote out somehow, had various other duties and so on, until finally we were left somewhere alone in that space. And I realized that this is probably not the way, that we will have to look for another way of communication, which meant for me that during October – November, during that autumn, I traveled overseas and tried to to meet those players, when they played in those clubs and similar, to talk, to explain to them what we want to achieve, how we want to achieve it. And maybe it hit a fertile ground for some of them - whether it was mainly Miro Šatan, who was then also the captain of the national team, it was Mišo Handzuš, who reacted to it in the way we needed, Zdeno Chára. These guys actually helped in that first moment to create a team that succeeded in St. Petersburg and then later was actually the basis for the next decade or so of successful performances of our national team."

"We were aware that the Russians have very fast wing forwards, that they simply started causing us a lot of problems, especially in our defensive zone. The lesser experience of the defenders and perhaps even the physical disposition towards the end of the tournament was probably not at the required level, so a few mistakes were made there, which the Russians were able to punish, and as a result, they drew it to 3:3, so it flowed to us shoe. And I also tried to guide the players on that substitution so that we could last until the end of the regular playing time, so that we would then make the plan for the extra time that we would play, and with that I sent the quality of the players to the ice , which we had. Well, what actually happened was that when I was drawing attention to how we must devote ourselves to the defense, the Russians made a mistake somewhere on the blue line, and our offense, led by the pair of Stumpel... Žigo Pálffy and Bondra, was actually able up until then the great catcher Sokolov, who was declared the best goalkeeper of the tournament – they probably didn't credit him with this goal, in the whole thing – so they were able to overcome him, with that shot by Peter on the bar, and that was actually what brought us the gold."