By the time Klára Peslarová was 17 years old, she had outgrown playing in Czechia. She spent most of the regular season in 2012-13 and 2013-14 playing in Czechia’s elite boys leagues. In 2012-13, she was with HC Poruba in the U16 boys development league. The next year, she moved to the U18 boys development team. After that, Peslarová joined SK Karviná of the Czech women’s elite league in the playoffs. They’d go on to win back-to-back championships (in 2013 and 2014).
Peslarová was a rising star for Czechia in the 2012-13 season, and in the 2013-14 season, it became clear that her trajectory was stardom. After earning the Czech elite women’s league championship in 2013-14, Peslarová burst onto the international stage. First, at the 2014 U18 IIHF World Championship, Peslarová dragged Czechia to their second-ever U18 Worlds bronze medal. That run featured a 3-1 semifinal loss to the USA, where the game was tied going into the second period and Peslarová made 58 of 61 saves. It wouldn’t be the last time she gave the USA a scare like that. Peslarová then followed that up in the bronze medal game with a 1-0, 22-save shutout over Russia. The cherry on top was Peslarová being named IIHF Top Goalie with a 0.951 SV%.
The Czech senior national team had seen enough. For the 2014 IIHF Division 1A World Championship, Czechia made the 17-year-old Peslarová their starting goalie. They were looking for promotion to the top division and trusted her with the job. The team was excellent, and so was Peslarová, who went 4-0 with a 0.975 SV%. Unfortunately for Czechia and Peslarová, they ran into Japan. A team fresh off an Olympic last place finish but with their own young star in net: Nana Fujimoto. In a three-game series to earn the right to play in the Worlds top division in 2015, Japan won two games to one. Czechia would have to wait another year to earn promotion.
By the time Peslarová was 17, she had secured two Czech elite women’s league championships and Czechia’s first U18 Worlds medal in six years, and was the number-one goalie of the senior women’s national team. Stardom had arrived for her, but to grab onto it, she’d need to be challenged more. To do so, she’d need to leave Czechia, and leave she did to Russia. At the time in 2014-15, Russia was coming into their own as a hockey power in women’s hockey. The past three Worlds, Russia had been to two bronze medal games and won one. They’d continue being a bronze medal threat until their expulsion from international competition in 2022.
While Czechia was trying to get into the top division, Peslarová went to the country that was developing players in hopes of becoming a top-four nation on the world stage. We don’t know how it went in Russia, as those stats don’t exist. What we do know is that when given the chance again at promotion, Czechia and Peslarová did not miss. At the 2015 D1A Worlds, Peslarová posted a 0.954 SV%, along with a 4-0 record. With that, Czechia had earned themselves a spot in the 2016 IIHF World Championship.
The SDHL, then known as the Riksserien, was the Swedish top-tier women’s hockey league. At the time, it was probably the fourth- or fifth-best women’s league in the world. It was the next challenge Peslarová was to take as a goalie, and she wasn’t even 20 years old by then. A challenge it was indeed, as Peslarová joined SDE, a team that had recently been promoted from the second tier Swedish league to the SDHL. She was joining a team that finished its first season in the SDHL with a 3-25 record and just barely staved off relegation. It wasn’t going to get better for them.
In the two seasons Peslarová played with SDE in the SDHL, she’d have a record of 4-42 and a 0.914 SV%. Not exactly the journey you’d expect one of the best goalies in the world to be making. Peslarová stepped out of Czechia and was immediately given a crash course in adversity. She was looking to reach her potential and had run into a wall. When, in the second season with a team, you post a 0.926 SV% but the team’s leading scorer has only 11 points in 35 games and the team wins a total of four games in a 36-game season, you’re going to question the upside of being there.
At Worlds, the story wasn’t much different for Peslarová than it was at SDE. Czechia was finally in the top division of the World Championship, and their first two years consisted of avoiding relegation. In fact, Czechia only avoided relegation in 2017 because Worlds was expanding to 10 teams, removing the need to relegate Czechia. To top off the terror seasons of 2015-16 and 2016-17, Czechia did not qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics. It came down to a final game against Switzerland, and Czechia lost 4-1. The Olympics would have to wait.
Facing no Olympics and being on a team that would eventually take another three seasons to win more than 10 games, Peslarová brought her talents back to Czechia for the 2017-18 season. Four seasons after leaving Czechia in search of proving herself as a winner, Peslarová was back to where it all began. She spent time with the men’s club HC Poruba and the women’s club SK Karvina. Peslarová explained, in an interview with Nathaniel Oliver at The Hockey Writers, that she had moved back to Czechia to “relax, draw energy and gain new strength”.
A year back home was what Peslarová needed, and she was ready to leave the homeland again for the 2018-19 season. Originally, it looked as though she’d be back at SDE. However, MoDo was losing Emma Söderberg to the University of Minnesota-Duluth and Sarah Berglind to retirement. They needed a replacement and called up Peslarová.
She was an instant fit for MoDo, who didn’t lose a beat as a contending team. Peslarová came in and was immediately a top-three goalie in the league. Finally, some success for the future young star. MoDo made the playoffs as the second-place team in Peslarová’s first season with them. They didn’t make it past the second round, but Peslarová made it clear she was there to stay. A small dip the next season in 2019-20, when many of the team’s best offensive players left, didn’t slow down Peslarová. She finished her four-year career with MoDo by winning SDHL Goalie of the year in 2021-22.
Her international career followed this path as well. Pre-2018 Olympics, Czechia was trying to avoid relegation. Post-2018 Olympics, Czechia and Peslarová found a new gear. At the 2019 and 2021 Worlds, Czechia was the best team in Pool B with Peslarová backstopping them. They were inching further to pushing themselves into the top five on the international stage.
This series will continue with Part II.