Mat Robinson may not have taken a traditional route in his hockey career, but the defenceman carved himself a path overseas that led him to a pair of trips to the Olympic Winter Games
Four years ago was a moment Mat Robinson will never forget.
As his wife, daughter, family and friends cheered him on in the stands, he
captured an Olympic bronze medal with Canada’s Men’s Olympic Team at the
2018 Games in PyeongChang.
With nine years of professional hockey under his belt, you may have
expected the then-31-year-old to make a career decision after the Olympics.
But Robinson had no plans of slowing down.
“I still felt like I had quite a bit of hockey left in me,” he says. “I was
playing for CSKA Moscow in the KHL, and I was on a very, very good team.
For me, I just wanted to keep playing there and enjoy my time there.”
Robinson was motivated by the opportunity to win a championship with his
team—a goal he achieved in 2019 when CSKA Moscow won the Gagarin
Cup—although the chance to represent his country again at the Olympics
provided him with an additional boost to keep playing hockey.
“It definitely was in the back of my mind, I’m not going to lie,” the
defenceman says. “I always knew that this chance could possibly be there.
You never know where you’re going to be four years after an Olympics. I
knew I just had to take it one day, one season at a time and keep playing
at the level that would be leaving me in a position to actually make this
team.”
Becoming a two-time Olympian is something Robinson never could have
imagined. The Calgary, Alta., native was not drafted into the Western
Hockey League nor the National Hockey League.
He played four seasons with the University of Alaska Anchorage, serving as
captain in his final season. After completing his degree, Robinson played a
handful games with the Las Vegas Wranglers of the ECHL and split the
2009-10 season between the American Hockey League’s Binghamton Senators and
the ECHL’s Elmira Jackals.
“I didn’t have a great start to my career,” he says. “I just kind of felt
like there was nothing there for me. I didn’t want to be classified as an
[ECHL] kind of hockey player, and I felt like that’s what was going to
happen.”
After one season in North America, Robinson looked overseas to continue his
dream of playing professional hockey.
“I just felt the European game may be more for me,” he says. “At the end of
the day, at that point in my…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at News…