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After spending time with four teams in seven NHL seasons, 32-year-old defenseman Jaroslav Spacek has found a home in Edmonton, and has become one of the Oilers' most dangerous weapons.
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Spacek proves to be
a perfect fit
By Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist
April 17, 2006
It was following an early Sunday morning practice recently that Edmonton Oilers defenseman Jaroslav Spacek rubbed his eyes, as if he had just awakened from a dream and still wasn't sure he was no longer in Oz.
Even the 32-year-old Spacek has been taken by surprise at the way he's played since arriving in Edmonton from the Chicago Blackhawks in a lopsided trade for tiny forward prospect Tony Salmelainen on January 26. Part of the equation that makes this deal a steal for the Oilers has to do with Jaroslav being given a new life, with a team that could be considered a playoff threat -- and the rest derives from the confidence the Rokyhany, Czech Republic native has gained by teaming with All-Star Chris Pronger on the same defensive pairing in Edmonton.
Spacek is a square, sturdy sort, standing 5-foot-11, 206 pounds. He is certainly not a towering presence like Pronger, who is 6-6, 220 pounds. Still, it's the size of the effort that matters most and even the Oilers have to be pleasantly surprised at the early production they've gotten from a player who is now on his fourth NHL team in just seven seasons.
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.
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But after being dependable, yet unsung, playing for the Florida Panthers, Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets and Chicago again before his trade to Edmonton, Spacek has teamed with Pronger on the team's No. 1 defensive pairing at even strength, on the power play and killing penalties. It's always been the utmost of a compliment to talk about a defenseman and say he's playing Pronger minutes -- anywhere from 25 up over 30 minutes a game. But playing them with Pronger -- and not looking out of place in any situation -- is the biggest plaudit anyone can be given.
Spacek, a puck-moving defenseman with a nasty one-timer, has become one of the most dangerous weapons the Oilers have in their arsenal, proving they are a legitimate playoff threat for the first time since they won five Stanley Cups in seven years from 1984-1990.
You could say that Spacek is still pinching himself that he's now in Edmonton, a place he found himself in two flashbacks during the first couple minutes of our interview. One of those flashbacks happened in Jaroslav's early teens in Rokyhany, Czech Republic and the other occurred on January 26.
Not surprising, these flashbacks happened nearly 20 years apart.
"Life is full of surprises, you know?" Spacek said. "Back home when I was growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we were still under Communist control. There weren't many TVs and even magazines that might have had stories about the NHL were hard to find. I would see the odd highlight from a game or share a magazine that my friends were passing around. At that time, most of those magazines had stories about how great Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, Kevin Lowe and the rest of the Oilers were."
Now, back to the future, and Spacek's trade from Chicago to Edmonton.
"I kind of did a double-take, when I came back home from a hard practice back in late-January and, after turning the phone down so that I could get a good nap before we had to play Calgary that night, I woke up and noticed that my answering machine had two messages on it. One was from (Blackhawks General Manager) Dale Tallon and the other from (Oilers GM) Kevin Lowe," Spacek told me. "I had heard rumors that New Jersey and Edmonton were interested in me. But ... for a moment ... I remembered the tradition of those Oilers I read about when I was growing up. It was kind of surreal."
While most Oilers' fans were surprised when Lowe acquired two defenseman -- Spacek and Dick Tarnstrom from Pittsburgh -- instead of a long-anticipated goaltender, there was no surprise among hockey people that the team pulled the trigger quickly when Spacek's name was mentioned.
"While he might have been small in stature, I remember seeing Spacek making a big contribution for the Czech Republic in the World Championships and Olympics," St. Louis Blues General Manager Larry Pleau said. "This is a defenseman with a lot of skills. It's funny, but you're never really sure how a defenseman will fit in after a trade. Chemistry is so important, you know. But in watching the way Spacek and 'Prongs' set up one another for those hard one-timers and the way they dangle the puck on the power play ... well, it's obvious they have a lot in common."
"Am I surprised at how well Spatchie's played here?" said Pronger. "Not at all. We've bumped into one another ... physically ... several times over the years. He's always been tough to play against. What's so good for us is we both see the ice, see play development in front of us both offensively and defensively pretty much the same way."
St. Louis Blues center Ryan Johnson, who was in Florida when Spacek began his NHL career after helping Dominik Hasek, Jaromir Jagr, Robert Reichel and Co. to the gold medal at Nagano, Japan, in 1998, says he shakes his head every time he's sees Spacek traded.
"Jaro's very smart, logs tons of minutes, has an absolute bomb for a shot and uses every once of his body to get his nose dirty on defense," said Johnson.
Oilers' teammate Chris Pronger comments on Jaroslav Spacek:
"Am I surprised at how well Spatchie's played here? Not at all. We've bumped into one another ... physically ... several times over the years. He's always been tough to play against. What's so good for us is we both see the ice, see play development in front of us both offensively and defensively pretty much the same way."
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A couple days after the acquisition of Spacek and Tarnstrom, I was talking to Calgary Flames GM-coach Darryl Sutter about the Oilers' defense and the transition it has made since last summer.
"When they added Pronger I thought they had arguably the best four-man group of defensemen in the NHL (with Pronger, Jason Smith, Steve Staois and Marc-Andre Bergeron)," Sutter said. "Now, it's even better and I have no doubt their six defensemen are clearly the best in the League."
If the consensus is that Spacek's success since going to Edmonton is no surprise, then we can at least establish that Jaroslav's career is ... at least a nice surprise to Spacek himself.
"When you're a kid, you dream about the NHL," he said, with a big smile. "But after a while with no real progress, you start to think about getting a real job."
No, not like working in a steel factory like Jaroslav Sr., his dad. Or working in an office like Marie, his mom, who is a secretary back home.
"I had just signed a three-year contract with Farjestads of the Swedish Elite League, when I was invited to play in the Olympics," Spacek told me. "I was pretty comfortable in where my life was headed. But, after we won the gold medal, my agent told me that several NHL teams were talking about drafting me. I was 24 and had just about forgotten about my dream to play in the NHL, when I hear this. I was just beginning to believe that all I had heard before that was that I was too small was, well, true."
Spacek came up in an era when almost all NHL teams wanted their defensemen to be 6-3 and over 200 pounds. Surprise. Surprise. Farjestads went on to win the Swedish Elite League title and Jaroslav also played on a Czech team that won the World Championships after the Olympics. And in the months before the June draft in 1998, Spacek gave the NHL more and more thought.
"This was a big step, a big decision, whether to stay in Sweden or give the NHL a try," Spacek said. "The first day of the draft went by and I never heard anything. Then, about noon the next day I got on the internet and found my name in the fifth round to Florida. I heard Florida and I said to myself, ?If the NHL doesn't work out, I hear there are some nice golf courses there and I think I can either go back to Farjestads or find another team to play for over here.' "
Spacek was teamed with fellow Czech Robert Svehla on Florida's top defensive pairing. He also got important minutes in Chicago and Columbus.
"He never quits," said Oilers winger Radek Dvorak, who also is from the Czech Republic and was in Florida when Spacek broke into the NHL. "He's on our country's national team every year because he never stops working hard."
Oilers GM Kevin Lowe was looking for a spark from Spacek and Tarnstrom to bridge the gap in his team's flow from defense to offense.
"Our forwards have a lot of speed and a lot of skill," Lowe said. "But there seemed to be a gap in working the puck up the ice to them, get it in their hands more often. That has gone from a concern for us to a key part of our team's profile since the first of the year."
And it doesn't hurt that Spacek, Lenka, his wife, and David, his son, felt right at home when they were greeted in Edmonton by Dvorak and his wife and son, whom they knew in Florida. Plus, Czech forward Ales Hemsky.
Surprise package? You bet. Now, all that's left is for Jaroslav Spacek to help the Edmonton Oilers to a surprise ending in the playoffs. Just like the Oilers did in those magazines Spacek grew up reading back home so many years ago.
He's already got a gold medal and a world championship. All that's left is a Stanley Cup.
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