After retiring from soccer in 2019, Cech wanted to start a new routine to maintain his level of fitness. From there, he decided to get back into hockey by joining an amateur hockey league in England called the Guildford Phoenix and now currently plays for Chelmsford Chieftains.
"After 15 years of a professional career, you don't want to have like a boring routine all the time," Cech said. "So, I started skating a little bit to sharpen up, get different hand eye coordination and fitness going. Obviously, once I retired, I decided that I'm going to get back to it for playing some games, and I've playing last two years, so I enjoyed it."
Growing up, Cech played his two respective sports but spilt away from hockey once he started to pursue his professional soccer career. While he played in leagues in both the Czech Republic and France, he spent a majority of his professional career in the Premier League with Chelsea and Arsenal claiming four Premier League titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups one UEFA Champions League title and one UEFA Europa League title. He also still holds Chelsea's all-time record for clean sheets, with 228.
While facing shots from different Blackhawks players throughout practice, he stated that he expected to face some difficult shots considering the best hockey players play in the NHL and know how to control their shot and perfect clever moves.
"At the end of the day, you try to do the same thing if you try to fill the gaps, and it's hard to read, which is harder, but overall, I really enjoyed it," Cech said. "That is a priceless experience for me to get on the ice and try it out. So, it's brilliant."
After playing as a goalie in two different sports, he mentioned that despite the net size and the playing level, there really isn't much of a difference in the positions. The shot similarities will always stay the same and the pressure will remain consistent. The main contrast between the two are the nature of the game.
"You're on the ice, you need to skate once you go down, it's harder to recover," Cech said. "There's always plenty of situations where you have like odd man rushes where you sort of come out and [make that save], but in football it's the opposite way. You try to close the gap and read the angles because the goal is huge. So there are obviously differences but in terms of like shooting and angle positioning and the speed of reaction that that's pretty much it."
