25 Czech Olympic hopefuls hit the ice in Prague Thursday, then on to Sochi

Along with players from the nine other European countries that will be sending team's to the men's hockey tournament at the Winter Olympics, this weekend's international break represents the last chance Czechs based in Europe will have a chance to play together for Alois Hadamczik and his national team coaching staff and try to earn a coveted roster spot.

Roman Červenka is looking to make a return
trip to the Winter Olympics.
Photo: bleacherreport.com.

What makes this weekend's Channel One Cup so competitive for the Czechs and the other three countries there is that they are not only competing against each other, but also against numerous players who are currently in the NHL. How many spots are available to European-based players is tough to say, but they will be limited.

"There are a lot of quality players, both here in Europe and overseas," Jiří Novotný  told LevPraha.com's Karolina Antošová. An experienced international player who has twice captained the Czech team at the World Championships, Novotný was asked his chances of making the Olympic squad, to which he responded: "I think everyone on the roster has a chance. Maybe I'll know more after this tournament."

The roster of 25 players, which Novotný was referring to, contains a lot of familiar names:

Goaltenders: Alexandr Salák (St Petersburg, KHL), Jakub Kovář (Yekaterinburg, KHL). 

Defencemen: Petr Čáslava (Cherepovets, KHL), Ondřej Němec, Martin Ševc (both Lev Praha, KHL), Tomáš Kaberle (Rytíři Kladno), Lukáš Krajíček (Dinamo Minsk, KHL), Tomáš Mojžíš (Slovan Bratislava, KHL), Michal Barinka (HC Vítkovice Steel), Petr Zámorský (PSG Zlín). 

Forwards: Roman Červenka (St Petersburg, KHL), Jan Kovář (Magnitogorsk, KHL), Tomáš Vincour (Kazan, KHL), Jiří Novotný, Jiří Sekáč (both Lev Praha, KHL), Zbyněk Irgl (Dinamo Minsk, KHL), Michal Vondrka (Slovan Bratislava, KHL), Petr Nedvěd (Bílí Tygři Liberec), Jaroslav Hlinka, Jan Buchtele (both HC Sparta Praha), Jiří Šimánek (Mountfield Hradec Králové), Robert Kousal, Tomáš Nosek, Lukáš Radil (all HC ČSOB Pojišťovna Pardubice).

There's an abundance of international experience on that list, but only three have Olympic experience. Tomáš Kaberle has played twice -- 2002 in Salt Lake City and 2006 in Turin, and two others have played once: Roman Červenka played for the Czechs in Vancouver four years ago and, incredibly, Petr Nedvěd played for Canada in Lillehammer 20 years ago.

Of the three, Červenka probably has the best chance of returning. In 2010 he was a 24-year-old centre in the midst of scoring 30 goals in 50 Czech Extraliga games. Four years later, following a couple of productive years in the KHL and a brief stint in the NHL before a return to the wider KHL ice, where he has more success, he has 29 points in 37 games as a play-making winger. His flexibility should work to his advantage.

"Over the last four years I have played various roles, so it won't be major problem," Červenka said to hokej.cz, when the topic about where he could fit in with the team was brought up. As with most players, though, he wanted to talk more about this weekend. "Everyone knows that the team will be named soon, but if you start thinking that if you don't play well in this tournament you're not going to Sochi, you can really mess yourself up."

Like the Olympic tournament itself, the majority of the Channel One Cup will be played in Sochi, Russia, but one game between the Czech Republic and Finland will be played at O2 Arena in Prague, which will give Czech hockey fans a chance to see Olympic hopefuls from the two countries. 

"A lot of people will come to Prague to watch us, and we want to win for them," Červenka added.

The Czechs will go with three forward lines and seven defencemen for Thursday's game against Finland, with Jakub Kovař starting in goal. Both he and Alexandr Salák are expected to get in games this weekend. While Ondřej Pavelec is expected to be the Czech starting goalie in the Olympics, the door is open for one of these two, or possibly both, to make the roster as a number two or number three. Kovař isn't admitting to any pressure, though. 

"From my own experience, I know that too much does not depend on one game," Thursday's starting goalie coolly explained. "I've been on the national team a few times before. The Olympics are obviously something else, but one game or one goal against won't decide it for me. I'll wait til I'm notified by the coaches." 

Winger Zbyněk Irgl will not play on Thursday due to a lower-body injury, but might play on the weekend in Sochi. Kaberle will only play in Prague, then fly overseas to be with his family. According to hokej.cz, the Czech Republic's roster on Thursday will be the following:

Jakub Kovář, Salák - Kaberle, Ševc, Krajíček, Barinka, Němec, Čáslava, Zámorský, Mojžíš - Nedvěd, Hlinka, Červenka - Sekáč, Jan Kovář, Vondrka - Vincour, Novotný, Šimánek - Buchtele, Kousal, Nosek.

Schedule for the 2013 Channel One Cup:

Thursday, December 19:

16:00 Russia - Sweden (Sochi)
18:30 Czech Republic - Finland (O2 Arena, Prague)

Saturday, December 21:

11:00 Russia - Finland (Sochi)
16:00 Czech Republic - Sweden (Sochi) 

Sunday, December 22:

11:00 Russia - Czech Republic (Sochi)
16:00 Finland - Sweden (Sochi)

All times Central European. Live play-by-play commentary of all games will be available at Eurolivescores.com.

Out with the old, in with the new: Czech teams to play for Masaryk Cup

Written for Eurohockey.com, with information from Václav Jáchim of Hokej.cz.

The world of hockey has the Stanley Cup, the Gagarin Cup, and now the Masaryk Cup.

The new championship trophy of the Czech Extraliga was unveiled to the media on Wednesday at the Clarion Hotel in Prague. Upon first glance, it was apparent that both the name and the appearance of the trophy were an enormous step up from it's predecessor.

Radek Bonk of Třinec awkwardly lifts the old, nameless trophy in
2011. Photo: hcocelari.cz. 

To begin with, the old trophy didn't really have a name. It was just casually referred to as "pohár mistrů" (champions' cup), and its appearance was equally as generic. Looking like something in the display window of a trophy shop, except much larger, it was awkward to hoist and prone to disaster. The championship teams of Pardubice damaged it in both 2005 and 2010 -- the first time it needed to be replaced altogether, while the club had to pay to have the second one repaired.

"It might sound funny now, but at the time it was not funny at all," APK president Tomáš Král said about the cup's problems. But while stories of early misadventures are now part of the lore of the Stanley Cup, the sport of hockey's most recognizable piece of hardware, The Extraliga's biggest prize seemed to receive nothing but scorn and ridicule. Finally, league owners decided that their teams should compete for a symbol that commanded both reverence and respect, both in appearance and in name.

"We considered several proposals, we took into account aesthetics, dimensions and other criteria," said Král about what the finished product should look like.

The Masaryk Cup. Photo: hokej.cz.

The winning proposal was submitted by studio Artcore, and was built by Golfface, both Czech companies. It stands 73.8 cm tall and weighs approximately 15 kg. The main part is lightweight silver casing with gold plating and a stainless steel base. On the base, names of all future championship teams and players will be engraved year to year, much like the Stanley Cup.

Also like the Stanley Cup, the name has meaning to the roots of the sport in the country it represents as well. Lord Frederick Arthur Stanley of Preston was the Governor General of Canada, Queen Victoria's representative in the young dominion. The new Czech cup goes beyond that, to Czechoslovakia's first head of state.

"When searching for a name we were thinking about multiple personalities, inspired from abroad, and eventually decided on the TG Masaryk Cup."

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was the first president of Czechoslovakia, presiding from 1918 to 1935 and is one of the most respected figures in the nation's history. He is also connected to some significant Czech hockey firsts as well, donating the first domestic championship trophy in 1924 and presenting the winning team to the gold medalists at the 1933 World Championships in Prague. Lord Stanley's sons were big hockey fans and so were Masaryk's -- his son Herbert even played for HC Slavia Praha.

The new trophy will tour around the country during the 2013-14 season, appearing at a game in every Extraliga arena starting with the first game of the season on Thursday, when defending champion Plzeň hosts Vítkovice. Plzeň, of course, was the last winner of the old trophy, which will now be retired to the Czech Hockey Hall of Fame, which is scheduled to open in time for the 2015 World Championships.

"I think we've done it," Král happily declared. "I believe that the Masaryk Cup will be a worthy prize for a champion, and that it will give them their proper due."

Martin Růžička: European Player of the Month for October.

For Eurohockey.com

At the first international break, the Czech Extraliga's leading scorer is not Kladno's Jaromír Jágr or Tomáš Plekanec, despite the fine and high-profile tour they've made around the country, filing arenas everywhere they go, nor is it any of the many other locked NHLers who have flocked to the league. It is Oceláři Třineč's Martin Růžička, who has 36 points in 19 games and racked up an amazing total of 20 points in 10 games in the month of October. He did so in relative obscurity, tucked away in a small industrial town on the Polish border.

Photo: NČR PRESS/Lenka Rybaříková.

Far away, in the capital city of Prague, mention hockey and the name Růžička nearly everybody will think of Vladimír, former star player and now coach of Slavia. Even the name Martin Růžička might lead to some confusion, as the starting goaltender in Pardubice has the exact same name. Yet the career that Martin Růžička the forward has made for himself since arriving in Třinec as a 24-year-old in 2009 is impressive.

To that point, he had bounced between four different clubs in the Extraliga and I.liga, never recording more than 18 points in a season and failing to distinguish himself as top-line player. However, in the 2009-10 season, he recorded 47 points in 50 games, which was enough to earn him a spot on that year's gold-medal winning Czech team at the World Championship.

He followed that up with 50 more points the next year, but he that was just a precursor to the playoff he would have. There, he shattered the league playoff scoring record, recording 33 points in 18 games, leading Oceláři to their first, and so far only, national championship.

After a year with Amur Khabarovsk of the KHL, he's back in Třinec this season, and what a season it's been so far. He has failed to register a point in only two of the 19 games he has played. His most dominant performance came October 5, when he was in on all 5 of the game's goals in his team's 5-0 shutout victory over visiting Česke Budějovice, thanks to a hat trick and 2 assists. He finished his amazing month with a 4-point effort against local rival Vítkovice on October 28.

Apparently, a month like that will get you attention no matter where you play -- not only national but all across Europe. Eurohockey.com readers voted him Europe's best hockey player for the month of October. Not only was he competing against Jágr and Plekanec for that honour, but other names like Henrik Zetterberg, Alexander Radulov, Ilya Kovalchuk and Alexander Ovechkin.

Unfortunately, European hockey fans won't get the chance to see him in action this week at the Karjala Cup -- he's being kept out with back trouble. However, it seems to be only precautionary, and he's expected to be back in the lineup when Třinec returns to the ice next week.

A lot of factors to consider when building Karjala roster

When Europe's top four hockey nations released their roster last week for the Karjala Cup, the first leg of this year's Euro Hockey Tour, there was a lot of head-scratching among observers. With the surplus of bona fide talent playing in Europe right now, some were anticipating an all-star tournament of sorts in Finland that might include the likes of Jaromíř Jágr, Alexander Ovechkin, Henrik Zetterberg and others. But while some locked out NHLers were chosen to represent Finland, Russia, Sweden and the Czech Republic, the teams have mostly been made up of players committed to Europe for the full season.

Tomáš Hertl might get a shot at the World Championship this 

year if NHLers are unavailable. Photo: nhlmockdraft.org

The announcement of a roster without Jágr, David Krejči, Aleš Hemský and Tomáš Vokoun was especially disappointing to hockey fans in Liberec, who were hoping to see an all-star cast assemble this Thursday when the Czech Republic hosts Sweden to open the tournament. In fact, the Czech Republic could have built an entire team based completely on NHLers now playing in the Czech Extraliga and KHL.

"Of course, if Jarda Jágr plays, the fans will come," said Czech national team coach Alois Hadamczik. "But for me it can be rather annoying; if the NHL starts, we're going to the World Championships with only players in Europe."

Indeed, he's probably right. Of course, everyone remembers the last NHL lockout, the one that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season and left virtually all players free to compete in that year's World Championship. The Czech Republic, with an all-star cast that included Jágr and Vokoun, won the gold medal with a 3-0 victory over Canada in the final.

However, fewer people remember the tournament in 1995. That year, when a lockout forced the NHL to begin a 48-game schedule in mid January that finished in early May, no NHL players were free to compete in the World Championship. That year, the Czech Republic, with a roster composed entirely of Extraliga players, finished 4th, losing the bronze medal game to a Canadian team composed of players from the AHL, IHL and European leagues. If the scenario of 1995 repeats itself, which seems like a very good possibility at this point, Hadamczik has to create a team of players in Europe, and he wants to get potential players ready to play during the Euro Hockey Tour.

Balancing the possibilities between NHLers and domestics, his roster for the Karjala Cup includes both: Ondrej Pavelec, Marek Židlický, Ladislav Šmíd, Tomáš Plekanec, and Jiří Tlustý will be there (although Židlický and Plekanec will only play in Liberec), but so will young charges Jakub Krejčík, Jakub Svoboda and Tomáš Hertl.

Under normal circumstances, Hertl would probably be at the U20 tournament, which will run concurrently in Sweden in preparation for this year's World Junior Championship, but since an all-European-based Czech team at the Worlds would almost certainly include Hertl, it's important to get him playing time with the big boys.

Even with a few big names missing, there are still plenty of players to follow at the Karjala Cup, however. Most games will be televised in the Czech Replublic on ČT Sport and live text coverage will be available in English at Eurolivescores.com. From hokej.cz, below is the Czech roster, their lineup for the first game against Sweden (Wednesday at 18:00 CET) and the tournament schedule.

Czech roster for the Karjala Cup (November 7 - 10, Turku, Finland and Liberec):

Goaltenders:

Ondřej Pavelec (Bílí Tygři Liberec), Alexandr Salák (Färjestad, Sweden).

Defencemen:

Marek Židlický (Rytíři Kladno), Ladislav Šmíd (Bílí Tygři Liberec), Petr Čáslava (Cherepovets, KHL), Jakub Nakládal (Spartak Moscow, KHL), Filip Novák (Dynamo Moscow, KHL), Jakub Kindl (HC ČSOB Pojišťovna Pardubice), Jakub Krejčík (HC Lev Praha, KHL), Lukáš Galvas (HC Oceláři Třinec).

Forwards:

Tomáš Plekanec, Jiří Tlustý (both Rytíři Kladno), Petr Nedvěd (Bílí Tygři Liberec), Jiří Novotný (HC Lev Praha, KHL), Zbyněk Irgl (Dynamo Minsk, KHL), Michal Vondrka (Slovan Bratislava, KHL), Jakub Petružálek (Khabarovsk, KHL), Petr Koukal (Nizhnekamsk, KHL), Petr Hubáček (Jyväskylä, Finland), Jan Kovář (HC Škoda Plzeň), Jakub Svoboda (HC Kometa Brno), Tomáš Hertl (HC Slavia Praha), Lukáš Pech (HC Energie Karlovy Vary).

General Manager: Slavomír Lener
Head Coach: Alois Hadamczik
Assistant Coach: Josef Paleček
Assistant & Video Coach: Jan Procházka
Team Manager: Jan Černý
Team Doctor: Dr. Zdeněk Ziegelbauer
Physiotherapist: Michal Truc
Equipment Manager: Zdeněk Šmíd
Trainer: Petr Ondráček

Announced lineup (and line combinations) vs Sweden in Liberec:

Salák (Pavelec) - Židlický, Šmíd, Novák, Čáslava, Kindl, Nakládal, Krejčík, Galvas - Nedvěd, Plekanec, Tlustý - Petružálek, Koukal, Vondrka - Irgl, Novotný, Hubáček - Hertl, Kovář, Svoboda (Pech).

2012 Karjala Cup schedule:

Wednesday, November 7:

17:30 Finland - Russia (Turku)
18:00 Czech Republic - Sweden (Liberec)

Friday, November 9:

14:00 Sweden - Russia (Turku)
17:30 Finland - Czech Republic (Turku)

Saturday, November 10:

12:00 Czech Republic - Russia (Turku)
16:00 Finland - Sweden (Turku)

Czech hockey online in English

For the past six weeks, hockey-starved NHL fans have had to depend largely on hockey from Europe to get their fix. While a few games have been on in the United States and the United Kingdom on various ESPN platforms, most have had to search for internet streams with foreign-language broadcasts. These fans should be glad to know that live text commentary will now be available for many games in the Czech Extraliga and KHL.

Left to right: Marek Židlický, Tomáš Kaberle and Tomáš Plekanec
lead Kladno against Brno Tuesday. Josef Poláček, hc-kladno.cz.

All Czech hockey fans are familiar with the site onlajny.cz, which provides online text coverage of every Czech Extraliga game, as well as in lower men's leagues and top junior leagues. In the past couple of years they have also periodically provided English commentary to international events in the Czech Republic, such last last season's U18 World Championship in Brno, Znojmo and Břeclav.

In the past year and a half, I have covered several international events for the site's English version, called eurolivescores.com. Highlights include the 2011 IIHF Inline championship game in Pardubice and the 2012 U18 Women's championship game in Zlín. Typing events from a hockey game as they happen in rapid succession in a coherent manner takes some getting used to, and at first was a bit stressful, but I've gotten used to it.

Tonight, I will cover a professional hockey game in this manner for the first time: Rytíři Kladno vs Kometa Brno. For the third time this season, Kladno will play a home game at O2 Arena in Prague, the largest venue for hockey in the country. Both previous games drew over 15,000 fans and even more are expected this time. The increased interest in watching Kladno play is, of course, due to the NHL lockout and the subsequent arrival of club owner Jaromír Jágr and several other superstars to the team.

In what will surely be a disappointment to all those who have bought tickets, Jágr will not be in the Kladno lineup tonight, sitting out his second straight game with a yet-to-be-specified lower-body injury (though he says it's not the groin, which has given him trouble in the past). However, familiar names such as Marek Židlický, Tomáš Kaberle, Jan Hlaváč and Tomáš Plekanec will be. For Kometa, non-Czechs might know the names Miloslav Hořava and Róbert Petrovický, who both played in the NHL. The game is important for the league standings, as Brno is in 2nd place with 27 points, one ahead of Kladno.

Zdeno Chára and Alexander Radulov face

each other in KHL action on Thursday.
Photo: Jan Rachota, levpraha.cz.

Tuesday's game is actually the second that Eurolivecores has done in the Extraliga; on Sunday, Bill Meltzer of hockeybuzz.com provided commentary for Liberec-Kladno.

Coming up on Thursday, I return to O2 Arena to begin KHL online coverage as Lev Praha hosts CSKA Moscow, a matchup that will feature Zdeno Chára against Pavel Datsyuk. It will be a rematch of last Thursday's meeting in Moscow, where Datsyuk's CSKA club triumped 3-0. As some readers might know, I write for Lev's English website, so I'll try my best not to be a homer. In addition to all Lev home games that I'll be on location for, myself and a team of other commentators will provide commentary of other select KHL games, either from the arena or remotely.

Tuesday's Kladno-Brno matchup begins at 18:15 CET, 12:15 ET. Thursday's Lev-CSKA battle begins at 19:00 CET, 1pm ET.

Jágr, Plekanec to debut at O2

Everyone knew that once the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the National Hockey League and its Players' Association lapsed at midnight Eastern Time on Saturday night, it wouldn't take long for players to start joining European leagues. It sure didn't take long.

Jágr in a Kladno jersey. Photo: Josef Paláček, hc-kladno.cz.

On Saturday, before the expiration of the contract, Kladno natives Jaromír Jágr and Tomáš Plekanec were practicing with their home town Extraliga club, Rytíři, the club that Jágr actually owns. The team is apparently so anxious to make a spectacle of the debut of these players that they have moved their October 7 home game against Slavia Praha up to this Wednesday, September 19, and from the small arena in Kladno to the largest hockey venue in the country: Prague's O2 Arena. The change has already been made on the schedule on Kladno's website, but not Slavia's or at hokej.cz.

With a capacity of more than 17 000, O2 Arena would seem to be the perfect stage for such a big event. It also seems that it might not be only Jágr and Plekanec, either. The club's website declared the possibility of the pair playing "with other players". A club press released announced that they would try to sign up to five locked out NHLers; Kladno natives in the league include Michael Frolík, Tomáš Kaberle, Ondřej Pavelec, Jiří Tlustý, Jakub Voráček and Marek Židlický. As this would be a Kladno home game, the website also gives information on ticket information and free transportation to O2 Arena, a mere 35 km (23 miles) away.

"This is an exceptional sporting event and we hope that it will be of great interest," said Václav Bartoš, the club's Executive Director. "We want to offer a great experience to as many fans as possible and promote Kladno hockey with our best players outside of our city. We would also like to accommodate all the Kladno fans and season-ticket holders who would like to go."

In a funny twist, the visiting team will be the building's normal tenant, Slavia Praha. Slavia's season ticket holders won't have their regular seats reserved, but it's expected that because of the magnitude of this event, most of them will buy tickets, along with their usual "fan club" group (who will likely be given their familiar end of the rink) and thousands of other hockey fans who may have no particular affiliation to either team.  Despite being the visiting team, it's expected that Slavia will dress in their home dressing room and use their normal home bench, but wear their white road sweaters, while Kladno will wear home blue.

Though Slavia has not officially declared its pursuit of NHL players, their alumni in the NHL include Roman Červenka, an off-season signing of the Calgary Flames who is a former linemate of Jágr on the Czech national team as well as Avangard Omsk of the KHL. Others include Petr Kadlec, Pavel Kolářík and Vladimír Sobotka.

The building is expected to have a different atmosphere than a Slavia home game, as they often struggle to attract a crowd large enough to create a good atmosphere. Last year, the club's dismal season meant that fewer than 4500 fans per game came out. However, Slavia also played host to the league's largest crowd of the season, 11 284 against cross-town rival Sparta on January 15. The last time Jágr played for Kladno at O2 Arena was during the 2004-05 season; a game that attracted 15 785 fans. O2 Arena has attracted four of the five largest crowds in Extraliga history.

Kladno then has a regularly scheduled home game against Vítkovice on Friday, which presumably could be the first game that Jágr et al play actually in their home town. 

Increased workload makes blog suffer

The arrival of a Kontinental Hockey League club in Prague is a watershed moment in Czech  hockey, as it means that this country will see arguably its highest calibre of club hockey since the 1980s, when top players began trickling out of Czechoslovakia to the west.

The arrival of HC Lev Praha makes Derek a busy boy.
Photo: Ondřej Kalát, levpraha.cz.

Thursday is the day when Lev Praha makes its KHL debut on home ice at Tipsport Arena against Dinamo Riga. Though it has been known for months that this day was coming, I have not commented much about it, as I knew I would be writing for the team website and I therefore felt writing under the guise of unbiased journalism wouldn't be fair. Therefore, I want to make it clear that I am in fact working for the club.

I started this blog two years ago in hopes of breaking into hockey writing and filling a gap that I noticed, namely the lack of Czech hockey news and analysis in English. As a native English speaker living in the Czech Republic with an extensive background in hockey and writing, I felt myself more than qualified to fill that gap. To that end, I feel I have made definite progress.

In December 2010 I began contributing to HockeysFuture.com, Eurohockey.com in June 2011, and in the past 18 months, I have had paid assignments covering four IIHF World Championship tournaments, including three writing for the English versions of official tournament websites (2011 Inline World Championship in Pardubice, 2012 U18 Women's World Championship in Zlín, and 2012 U18 Men's World Championship in Brno). I also contributed from afar writing for Lev Poprad, the short-lived KHL franchise in the Slovakian Tatra Mountains.

If there was a downside to all of that extra work, it meant that I had less free time to write on this blog. Indeed, the number of entries for the 2011-12 season was approximately half of the previous year. This year, with the KHL in Prague, I have a great opportunity to further my writing career, but it will also take a great deal more of my time. Writing almost daily for Lev, as well as making contributions to the website of their corporate partner, HC Sparta Praha of the Czech Extraliga, added on top of a full-time teaching job does not leave me a whole lot of time to write as a hobby.

I want to make it clear that I am not saying I am finished with this blog. If there is big news from the Czech Extraliga, I will probably still write something. Also, around December, I will report on the developments of the Czech U20 national team as it prepares for the World Junior Championships, as articles I've written the past two years on the team have generated a lot of traffic from abroad. Just don't expect daily, or even necessarily weekly updates, as was common in the past.

As I write this, it is less than seven hours from the opening faceoff. For my preview of the game, click here, and check back often for previews, game reports, and player interviews throughout the season. If you don't already, following me on Twitter (@Djob76) will keep you informed about any other outlets that I might contribute to.