It was a long road to the NHL for goalie Vitek Vanecek who made his NHL debut this season at the age of 25 after five seasons playing in North America.

Every player who is drafted has dreams of eventually reaching the NHL, but many players have to prove themselves at various levels before they get there. It is so competitive that the vast majority of drafted players never even make it to the NHL.

Even as a second-round draft pick, it took Vanecek several years not only to get his opportunity, but even to prove just to himself that he was ready for the NHL.

Vanecek arrived in North America for the 2015-16 season, which he spent in the ECHL with the South Carolina Stingrays. After a good season, he was promoted to the Hershey Bears in the AHL where he played the next four years. It took him until Year 3 to realize he could make the jump to the NHL.

“I mean the first year in the [AHL] you’re trying to be good and show the people you can play at that level and then second year you like want to do better and better,” Vanecek said to NBC Sports Washington. “Sometimes you have bad games but you don’t know too much the people in AHL so you’re like what happened now? But they taught me to forget about it because you are playing back-to-back days so I mean like third year I started feeling like I could jump to NHL and get some games but it didn’t happen so I battled through.”

In that third year, 2018-19, Vanceck was named an AHL All-Star. He played in 38 games with a .907 save percentage and 2.62 GAA. The next season, first-round draft pick Ilya Samsonov went to the NHL to play in tandem with Braden Holtby while Vanecek remained in the AHL.

Rather than feel discouraged, Vanecek said, “Same thing I felt I could jump but didn’t happen so just battled but now opportunity came, you know?”

That opportunity came at the start of the 2020-21 season.

Heading into the season, Vanecek was supposed to be the No. 3 on Washington’s depth chart behind Samsonov and Henrik Lundqvist. A heart condition ended Lundqvist’s season before it began. That moved Vanecek up into the top two and he has been in command of the crease for much of the season with Samsonov sidelined after testing positive for the coronavirus.

While the last few games have been tough, Vanecek was named the NHL’s rookie of the month in January. He has at least earned himself a longer look at the NHL level this season and is likely to split starts with Samsonov once Samsonov returns.

After years in the AHL that opportunity finally came for Vanecek. Now it is just a question of what he will do with it.