Man of the Week: Martin Gernat
KHL.ru continues its ‘Man of the Week’ column with Martin Gernat. The Lokomotiv defenseman was awarded the Best defenseman honors last week as he is proving to be one of the best for his team on the blue line.
Slovakian defenseman Martin Gernat is at his first season in the league, but he has been awarded the best defenseman honors twice this season. The first time was at the fourth week, when he scored 5 (2+3) points in three games. This time, he made slightly worse, with 3 (2+1) points in four games, but both times he posted a game-winner, with this week’s even more meaningful as it happened on a high-stake game with Lokomotiv facing Spartak in Moscow on Jan 31.
Everything started at 36:14, when the Slovak blueliner was assigned a minor penalty with the Muscovites enjoying a 1:0 lead. Down by one, Lokomotiv tied things up with a shorthanded tally by Alexander Polunin, with Gernat still sitting in the sin bin. Spartak pushed the gas to take back its lead, but close to the end of their powerplay stretch, they failed to create a real danger to their opposition. After a wide shot by Spartak, Rushan Rafikov cleared the puck down the left flank – Gernat picked it up while exiting the penalty box and didn’t fail as he faced Andrei Kareyev all alone to score the go-ahead goal for the Railwaymen. It eventually became the game-winner for Lokomotiv, who is currently the second seed in the West just one point shy of SKA. Currently, Gernat is leading Lokomotiv for scoring from the blue line with 24 (7+17) points in 57 games – four points more than Andrei Sergeyev. Gernat is the only import player in the Yaroslavl lineup.
Early years
Martin Gernat was born on Apr 11, 1993, in Kosice, Slovakia, the second largest city in the country, following its capital Bratislava. Kosice is also a hockey hotbed that produced several high-profile players, including fellow KHLers Christian Jaros (Severstal) and Tomas Jurco (Avangard), other than other players who lined up in the league, like netminder Rastislav Stana, who spent six years in the league with Severstal and CSKA. After spending some time in nearby Presov, Gernat played within the HC Kosice youth system in 2009, staying there up to 2011. While lining up for Kosice in the Slovakian junior leagues, Gernat represented Slovakia at the 2011 U18 WJC in Germany. It wasn’t a good tournament for Slovakia, who got sensationally relegated to the Division I tournament.
Move to North America
Following his good performances at home and on the international scene, Gernat was selected 122nd overall in the fifth round of the 2011 NHL Entry Draft by the Edmonton Oilers. After his draft, he played two seasons in the junior Western Hockey League with the Edmonton Oil Kings before securing a three-year entry-level contract with the Oilers on Apr 20, 2013. Gifted with an NHL body and excellent skills, Gernat played a pivotal role with the Oil Kings as they clinched the WHL title in the defenseman’s first season in the league. In the meantime, he represented his native Slovakia at the 2012 WJC in Alberta, being close to his new home.
Gernat went on spending another season in the juniors, before joining the Oilers in his first professional season. The towering blueliner spent time in the AHL as well as in the ECHL before being traded to the Anaheim Ducks in February 2016. He would play just five games for the Ducks’ AHL affiliate, the San Diego Gulls, before signing in Czechia, with HC Sparta Prague, for the 2016–17 season.
Return to Europe
Gernat spent only one season with Sparta, then he returned home spending time with both HC Kosice and HC Presov in 2017-2018 before joining the Swiss National League side Lausanne HC for the remainder of the season. That season was followed by three productive seasons again in Czechia, with HC Ocelari Trinec. In Trinec, Gernat won two Czech Extraleague titles, and was awarded the Best defenseman honors in 2020-2021, when he led the league with 41 points from the blue line as he overgrew the Czech league.
After his triumphal 2020-2021 campaign, Gernat joined again Lausanne HC. Once again, he was very successful with is team, but he didn’t enjoy the kind of success he had at the club’s level, with the Lausanne side failing to go deep in the playoffs despite assembling a stacked roster in both seasons with Gernat patrolling the blue line. In the meantime, the Kosice-born defenseman represented Slovakia at the 2022 Beijing Olympics as a long-time regular with the national team. Following its international success, once his contract in Switzerland expired, Gernat inked a one-year deal in Yaroslavl, playing for the first time in the KHL.
And the fans in Yaroslavl could already see his potential – the defenseman is a key player for the Igor Nikitin’s squad as the playoff approach. His contribution to both ends of the ice will be key for the Railwaymen to have success in the postseason, and that’s exactly what he was brought in for this summer.
