|
|
|
Slovakia's Pavol Demitra equates the lack of respect he feels his country receives for its hockey talent as, "like climbing a steep, steep mountain".
|
Demitra earns respect for
Slovakia, himself
By Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist
Mar. 1, 2006
It was one of those plays that you see in a highlight reel, where you squirm as it unfolds ... and then suddenly you find yourself out of your seat cheering.
Time always seems to be ticking faster and faster when a team gets the puck in close, when the game is on the line like it was when Pavol Demitra quickly moved through the neutral zone and worked his way toward the Kazakhstan net.
Now it's the moment of truth!
Demitra centered the puck to linemate Marian Hossa for the winning goal in a 2-1 victory Feb. 19th to help Slovakia run its 2006 Olympic record to 4-0.
For seven seasons with the St. Louis Blues, I watched Demitra dance around opponents and tip-toe on the borderline of stardom. Three times he had more than 35 goals and twice he had more than 89 points. The only reason he is now successfully starring on the No. 1 line of the Los Angeles Kings -- centered by Craig Conroy and flanked by Alexander Frolov -- is because the Blues felt his 43 points in 66 playoff games wasn't enough production when it counted in the postseason.
Watching Demitra center arguably the best line in the Olympics with Hossa and Marian Gaborik on his flanks, I was reminded of a story I had done on Demitra and life in his quaint homeland and the fight his country has had in trying show the rest of the world all of the talent it has in hockey.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
Related Links
|
"We get no respect," Demitra told me, pointing to the automatic berths countries like Canada, United States, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic always seemed to get. "I could name off players like Hossa, Gaborik, Ziggy Palffy, Peter Bondra, Miroslav Satan, Jozef Stumpel, Michael Handzus, Ladislav Nagy, Zdeno Chara and so many more who are stars from Slovakia in the NHL. But our country gets no respect in the Olympics.
"It's like climbing a steep, steep mountain."
But climbing mountains -- or very hilly terrain -- is what Slovakia is famous for. That, plus great hockey for a country that has around 5.4 million residents spread across land about twice the size of the state of New Hampshire. Slovakia is in Eastern Europe and is bordered by Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Peter Stastny and his brothers, Anton and Marian, were the pioneers of hockey in Slovakia before it split from the Czech Republic in 1993. They defected from behind the Iron Curtain to the NHL's Quebec Nordiques in the 1980s. Today Peter Stastny remains the driving force and general manager of the country's Olympic team.
For several years after he finished his very successful NHL career, Peter was employed as a scout for the St. Louis Blues. He was a confidant and hero to Slovaks like Demitra, Michael Handzus, Lubos Bartecko and Ladislav Nagy, who started their NHL careers with the Blues, primarily on the advice of Stastny. It was Stastny who gave me more than a few hints about how to get Demitra to talk about himself.
I'll bet you didn't know that Pavol's dad was a star soccer player and when he was 15, Pavol had a tough decision whether to choose soccer over hockey. And I'll bet you didn't know that in Slovakia, Pavol's garage is bigger than his house.
Do I have your attention?
The way Demitra tells it, he chose hockey because of the speed and action and the creativity.
"It wasn't really a tough decision," Demitra told me. "Hockey was always my first love. But I still play soccer a little to keep in shape in the summer, although I play more tennis, and golf is fast becoming a passion of mine."
"He doesn't just dabble at tennis," Minnesota's Marian Gaborik told me. "I think I'm pretty good at it, but I have never beaten Pavol, and that drives me crazy."
Actually, Demitra and Michal Handzus won a doubles tournament that included more than 50 professional hockey players from Slovakia a couple years back.
Former teammate Keith Tkachuk comments on
Pavol Demitra:
"His one-on-one skills are remarkable. He always seems to use his speed and moves to find an opening and he has the vision to find a linemate breaking into a scoring position in an instant."
|
But Demitra still likes to keep a quiet profile, which explains why his dream house was built far out in the country, but still not too far away to get to the town of Trencin ... if he needed to get there in a hurry.
And that's where the garage comes in. Yeah, Pavol, what about that big garage? A car for all reasons?
"Well, I wouldn't say that," Demitra laughed. "I wasn't a kid who grew up tinkering with cars ("That's what mechanics are for."), but I always liked them, and hockey has given me the opportunity to collect some of my favorites."
So, we know Pavol wasn't a grease monkey and he is only into speed on the ice, not on the road like Mighty Ducks forward Teemu Selanne, who has raced cars and owns every fast automobile known to man.
In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to guess what car of the nine that Demitra owns is his favorite.
"My army Jeep," he said, smiling. "It gets me anywhere I want to go."
And that comes in handy at home.
"His house is in the middle of nowhere," Stastny told me.
"Not at all,"' Demitra denied. "It's about 10 miles from Trencin, where Marian Gaborik, Lubomir Sekaris, Robert Svehla, Ziggy Palffy, Miroslav Satan and Marian and Marcel Hossa come from. ... But there are a lot of hills between my house and the city."
Demitra made a quantum leap in coming out of his quiet shell when the Blues moved him from right wing to center and flanked him with power forwards Keith Tkachuk and Scott Mellanby.
"I teased him and teased him, trying to get him to be more assertive," Tkachuk said at the time.
Eventually, he opened up -- at least on the ice and in the locker room with the guys. Tkachuk actually joked that he created a "Cookie Monster" -- a happy-go-lucky star who did become more assertive.
"His one-on-one skills are remarkable," Tkachuk says. "He always seems to use his speed and moves to find an opening and he has the vision to find a linemate breaking into a scoring position in an instant."
Like he did with Hossa against Kazakhstan or with Gaborik on several occasions earlier in the Olympics.
Another thing you might not have known about Demitra? He nearly walked out on his NHL career before it ever started. He arrived from Slovakia for the 1993 Entry Draft thinking he would be taken in the first or second round, because that is what he had been told to expect.
"I sat there for nine hours," Demitra remembered. "I was so mad. I was ready to say 'forget this' and go back to Slovakia. I was heading for the door and somebody came to me and said, 'I just heard your name.' "
Ottawa drafted him in the ninth round. It turned out to be a steal -- a steal for the Blues, who obtained Demitra from the Senators for journeyman defenseman Christer Olsson in 1996.
Conroy was a checking-line center for the Blues at the time and remembers Demitra coming in quietly, being shy, but not shy when he had the puck.
"He didn't say a lot, but you knew he was going to be a great player," Conroy recalled. "The second year in St. Louis, Pav shaved his head. Maybe that was so we could tell him apart from the six or seven Slovakian players we had. I don't know. But everything must have seemed more comfortable for him, because all of a sudden he was an upper-echelon player."
The tip-off to this story is: Whether he is playing on a line with Tkachuk and Mellanby, Conroy and Frolov, Hossa and Gaborik -- whomever -- the 31-year-old Pavol Demitra is out to demand respect for himself, his linemates and Slovakia.
And you know something, it's not as much of an uphill battle as it once was.
| 
