Who is Samuel Hlavaj, Slovakia’s game-stealing Olympic goalie?

Des Moines, Iowa isn’t exactly a hockey hotbed. But every night, over 6,000 fans pack the Casey’s Center to check in on the future of the Minnesota Wild.

This season hasn’t been pretty, though. With 31 points, the Wild are dead last in the AHL. But it’s there where Samuel Hlavaj shares the crease with NHL veteran Cal Petersen, with Hlavaj rocking a 5-9-5 record and an .884 save percentage through 18 games.

That’s not exactly staggering numbers. But anyone who has watched Hlavaj play knows he can rise to the occasion when games really start to matter. In fact, he often outperformed Calder Trophy candidate Jesper Wallstedt last year in the same Iowa crease.

The 24-year-old keeper has been an absolute star internationally for the past half-decade. His numbers at the World Juniors were nothing to get excited about. But at the World Championship, Hlavaj has a career save percentage of .923 with a Slovak team that rarely has much NHL talent to work with and is usually fighting for its playoff lives.

With no active NHL goaltenders from Slovakia, Hlavaj was given the Herculean task of leading his country deep into his first Olympic tournament. For those who had never seen the undrafted keeper in action, his 38-save effort against Finland in a big upset on Day 1 of the Olympics in Italy was as good of a first impression as you could ask for. Without him and the two goals from Juraj Slafkovsky, the Slovaks would have been toast.

While many North American fans often discount the World Championship, NHL scouting departments don’t. Hlavaj was signed shortly after his remarkable effort at the 2024 World Championship, where he went 3-2, with a .925 save percentage. It wasn’t a fluke, either – he had a .932 save percentage in 2023 despite going 0-3. Hlavaj has been a starter for Slovakia at the past two World Championships, and was named as one of the team’s top three players in both of them.

Prior to kicking off his North American pro career, the 6-foot-4 athletic keeper was a workhorse for a terrible HC Plzen squad in the top Czech league, showing he can handle the pressure of busy workloads. That worked out well once he joined Iowa, where he shared the net with Wallstedt. Wallstedt ultimately took the backup job with the big club this year (he was viewed as Minnesota’s goalie of the future, after all), leaving Hlavaj to work it out in the AHL.

It’s easy to see the ugly numbers in Iowa this year and simply discount Hlavaj as a goalie who got hot in one game on the biggest stage of his career. And, hey, maybe it ends up being the best game he plays all tournament. But this wasn’t a fluke – Slovak fans know this better than anyone. Hlavaj might not have the glitz and glamour of, say, Connor Hellebuyck or fellow Wild keeper Filip Gustafsson. But he has the size, athleticism, and play-reading ability to win big games. And that’s not to mention the mental fortitude to take so-called tournament favorites head-on.

Sure, he’s no prime Jaroslav Halak. But Hlavaj has always been great internationally, which included a huge Olympic qualification tournament performance last year. Don’t be surprised if the Slovaks get him right back into action against Italy on Friday and call him back up against Sweden the next day.

At this point, with an unexpected regulation win over the Finns, everything’s on the table. Slovakia proved they’re not going to be an easy out in Milano.