Gregory Holst was a professional ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

 player who played eleven games in the National Hockey League

National Hockey League

The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...

. He played with the New York Rangers

New York Rangers

The New York Rangers are a professional ice hockey team based in the borough of Manhattan in New York, New York, USA. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . Playing their home games at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers are one of the...

. After some years with the New York Rangers

New York Rangers

The New York Rangers are a professional ice hockey team based in the borough of Manhattan in New York, New York, USA. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . Playing their home games at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers are one of the...

 and also the AHL

American Hockey League

The American Hockey League is a 30-team professional ice hockey league based in the United States and Canada that serves as the primary developmental circuit for the National Hockey League...

team of New Haven, he went to Europe by the end of the 1970s. Holst was active in the highest Austrian League, the Bundesliga. He became one of the most famous Canadian players being active in Austria, and after finishing his active career in 1993, he continued as a head coach for several Austrian teams. Holst was very successful with the Villacher SV, leading the team to three play-off participations and three vice championships between 2004 and 2006. By the end of the season 2005/06, Holst decided to return to his home country in order to organize his hockey school for talented young players, an institution he had been trying to inititate since 2003. Today, he and other coaches train around twenty young talents throughout the summer breaks.

Trivia

In Austria and also the German-speaking neighbouring countries of Switzerland and Germany, Greg Holst became a "legend" for his interview after a match between his team, Villach, and the Vienna Capitals (final result: 4:5 after penalty shoot-out). His team had already led by 2 goals at the beginning of the last period, but eventually had to play shorthanded for over five minutes (three minutes of it with only three players on the ice), helping the team of Vienna to draw the game. Holst used the four-letter-word nine times (!) in one minute, with an interesting mixture of English and German with a Canadian-Austrian accent.