(Prague, Czech Republic)

The last time I was in Prague was in 1999. I had recently finished my law studies and I was living on a real budget. I was travelling with a friend from Toronto and we found our accommodation as we stepped off the train in Prague’s central train station. We went with a “gut feeling” that the guy who approached us was trustworthy and that our $15/night room (or was it $10?) northeast of downtown would be safe.

Needless to say, it is a little different this time around.  The tour organizer has taken care of everything.  We are staying at a well known international chain hotel right in the middle of downtown on the famous Wenceslas Square. Our own bus is taking us to our hockey games and will also be shuttling us around 4 different countries.

As for the hockey…the first game was a real eye-opener.  Our opponents were led on the ice by Milan Novy: the Czech national team player who was apparently described by Bobby Orr in 1976 as the best player in the world at the time (after leading Czechoslovakia to a win over Canada in the first round of the Canada Cup).  Novy was also one of the few Czech players to play in the NHL before the fall of the iron curtain.

While Novy is now in his 60s, his teammates were various Czech ex-professionals from the much more recent past.  Our team, meanwhile, had arrived from Canada that same day and were both sleep-deprived and jet-lagged.  Our goalkeeper played a heroic game to keep the score down and we managed to score 3 goals against this Czech all-star team.  We were told that this was probably the strongest team we would face…but that our next Czech opponents were younger and “almost as good”!

That assessment was correct.  Our two opponents on the second day also had former professionals, although not as many as on the first team we played.  As for the outcomes:  let’s just say that our results “improved”!  None of our opponents could be classified as weak in any way…and they were all extremely motivated to win because this was actually considered a tournament (we had thought that they were all exhibition games).  The last game was especially close but some very “flexible” rules proved to be our downfall.  I won’t go into the details but the bottom line is that any penalty results in an automatic penalty shot.

All three of our games in Prague were at the Zimní stadion.  It clearly goes back to the days of communism and, surprisingly, has North American dimensions rather than the wider international ice surface.  However, the blue lines are very close together:  this means that there is a lot of room in the attacking zone and our opponents really took advantage of that.

While the on-ice results haven’t completely been what we hoped for, we still had a lot of fun playing the familiar yet different European game.  After 3 games in less than 24 hours, though, there won’t be any hockey tomorrow.  We can be tourists for a day!