Bratislava Capitals officially end season; Canadian playing for team recounts double tragedy

A week after the Bratislava Capitals made a special submission to the Austrian-based ICE Hockey League to end its season in the wake of two tragedies to hit the team, the request has been officially granted. Many players had already left the Slovak club, but permission to end the season was officially granted Tuesday.

The Capitals were hit by two tragedies in a very short time. Near the end of October, player Boris Sadecky collapsed to the ice and was rushed to hospital during a game that would end up being cancelled. Sadecky would die in hospital a few days later of an apparent inflammation of the heart. A day after his death, the team's General Manager, Dusan Pasek Jr., went missing. He was eventually discovered in his home where he had committed suicide. It was later revealed by police that Pasek left a note saying he couldn't handle the guilt after Sadecky had come to him before the season began, told him he wasn't feeling great, and asked whether he should take some time for testing. Pusak apparently advised him to stay with the team instead.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview with La Presse in Quebec, Marc-Olivier Roy, who was playing with Bratislava at the time, recounted the tragedies.

"At the end of the first period, there were six seconds left, we were on the power play. I win the face-off, we take a shot on goal and there's like an altercation in front of the goal. You see Boris kneeling in the middle. We thought he had been hit, a dirty hit that we hadn't seen," said Roy, who often goes by the name Marco.

"The buzzer had just gone off," he added. "We went to him and he said to me, 'I don't feel good, Marco.' He turned on his side and fell backwards."

"You could see it in his eyes that he wasn't there," Roy explained. "It was glassy. There was something there, I knew it. Usually, if you're hurt, you talk."

Roy added that the team attempted to go on with life while praying for Sadecky to get better. Then, after finishing a game on November 2nd, they learned he had died in hospital.

"The news was really hard for everyone. It was not easy. It's not like we learned of his death in a car accident. When you live it, it's a little different. "

«We were a very close team,» he continued. "We see each other more often than our families. We see each other every day. I never thought I would experience this in my career."

While attempting to process the news, Pasak went on the missing list.

"[The authorities] had done some research," Roy said. "We thought he might have gone to decompress, walk in the woods, near the lake behind. We didn't think about that," said Roy, referring to Pasek's suicide.

Roy said the next morning, the entire team received a text message where they learned of Pasek's death. He said it was another shock for several people who were already in mourning.

"Dusan, I had been around him for four months," Roy said. "I used to go to a restaurant in Bratislava for dinner and he was there all the time. He came to see us, he looked happy. He had everything in life: big cars, the apartment. He has no family. Maybe that's what he was missing, I don't know," said Roy.

Pasek's father, Dusan Pasek Sr., also died by his own hand in 1998 after apparently going heavily in debt due to gambling. It's hard to imagine the grief and confusion the players and staff of the Capitals felt after all of this went down.

Roy was drafted to the NHL by the Edmonton Oilers in 2013. However, he would spend several seasons going between the AHL and ECHL before eventually signing with Bratislava just before the 2021-22 season began.

Sources: News.in-24.com

La Presse

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