When the news that Zigmund Palffy had retired (using a wood stick till the very end!) hit the wires, I was amused as heck by the fact that so many NHL fans didn't know that he was still playing, because I spend my summers reading the Czech and Slovak media, and the number of former Czech and Slovak NHL'ers who go home and end up playing for another half-decade or more is plain old staggering. Martin Straka retired last summer, but Martin Rucinsky, Petr Nedved, Josef Stumpel and another dozen former NHL'ers are playing in the Czech Extraliga or the KHL, and the same is true for Slovaks, Ladislav Nagy, Miroslav Satan, Branko Radivojevic, etc.
It's just something you get used to after a while, and in the cases of players like Straka, the man literally worked as the GM while he was playing with HC Plzen, he bought a majority stake in the team to save it from folding, and now he's the team's coach.
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it's almost predictable that most of the older-guard guys will "go home" and play for another three-to-five years, and the Sporting News's Sean Gentile took a look at some of the more notable members of the active Czech-and-Slovak ex-NHL'er club:
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