Vrana is out to prove to everyone he’s back
Forward had confidence shattered in the playoffs
WASHINGTON — Washington Capitals forward Jakub Vrana went home to the Czech Republic in the summer feeling frustrated and with his confidence shattered. The 23-year-old had just completed his second postseason run with the Capitals and the team’s first-round playoff exit and lingering doubts of his play still danced in his mind.
The speedy, smooth-skating winger recorded zero points through seven postseason games against the Carolina Hurricanes, after having a career year in goals (24) and assists (23) in the regular season. Nearly everything was clicking for Vrana through 82 games, but the playoffs were a different animal. When reporters brought up his career year in early September, it was Vrana who cut in and joked about his poor postseason play negating his regular season.
He kept on thinking about the teammates he let down, the goals he should have scored or if he was just a second faster down the ice. All the scenarios raced through his head, with the “what ifs” stacking on top of each other one by one. He was prepared, he just didn’t execute.
“I was really down on myself,” Vrana said.
The overthinking continued when he was home with friends and family in the Czech Republic and didn’t start to diminish until he started playing in the World Championships for his national team. He started to feel his confidence returning, getting back on the ice and proving the type of player he could be. In the World Championship preliminary rounds Vrana had five points in seven games.
Then, he was broken down once more. In the World Championship quarterfinals, Vrana was scratched ahead of the Czech Republic’s game against Germany. The scratch came after an expert for iSport.cz, Marek Sykora, said in an interview that Vrana “doesn’t work enough” and that he could see his “celebrity manners.” It was another blow to Vrana’s comeback mission.
“I went to the World Championships where I kind of got my confidence back first couple games and then you see what happened there, it is the same thing with the playoffs,” Vrana said. “You can’t change it anymore.”
After the World Championships, Vrana continued to train by himself, taking some time off in the offseason to be with his friends and family. In part, that is a sliver of his coping mechanism when he’s been in a bad place. To escape the rink and have fun and recharge the body is exactly what he did in mid-July, taking a vacation to Marbella, Spain. It was there he got the news via phone call that his agent had worked out a two-year, $6.7 million deal to re-sign with the Capitals.
But while taking off from hockey can be helpful, Vrana knows where he would much rather be — at a hockey rink, all by himself, with no one else around. It’s usually hard to find an open sheet of ice like that in Czech Republic, but Vrana said he’s continuously trying. He wants to eventually find a place like the Capitals’ practice facility, where he routinely was the last player on the ice after practice last season, just working on his craft.