Getting to Know: Jan Rutta

"He's a guy that is willing to go to war out there."
That's how Kris Letang described his new teammate, Jan Rutta, who signed a three-year contract with the Penguins after winning back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Rutta, 32, said he developed that style of play after coming over to North America following four years of professional hockey in his native Czech Republic.
"I came here pretty late, so the style of play in hockey in Europe is much different," he said. "I just figured if I want to stay in this league and be successful, I need to bring something. I think competitiveness and grit, or just the compete level - that's something that is just a matter of will. I picked up on it, and it works pretty good."
That's what Rutta is like on the ice
. Now, get to know more what he is like off the ice heading into tomorrow's matchup against his former team.
Since he had his day with the Cup this past summer, I thought that would be a good place to start, as a player's itinerary typically provides a lot of insight into their background.
After celebrating the day before with fellow Czech native Onrej Palat, when Rutta got the trophy the following morning, he flew to his hometown of Pisek. I'll let him take it from here…
"I headed there for a couple hours, there's a hockey player class that I used to attend. I remember when I was younger, a player named Stan Neckar from my hometown won it (with Tampa Bay in 2004). He was the only other guy, so I thought it would be cool to bring it there.
I did that, then I told my dad that I would take it for one hour to any place of his choosing. We went to kind of his spot to go with his friends, so it was a lot of fun.
Then I saw that when Chicago won, Cristobal Huet took a picture with the Eiffel Tower because he's from France. I was like, that's pretty cool. So me and my closest friends and family (his parents and younger sister Denisa), we drove to Prague. There's the famous square with the clock, so we took a couple of pictures there, and had a nice couple of drinks (laughs).
Then I took it to my favorite beer hall in Prague. I ate goulash and dumplings from the Cup. That was pretty good. Then I had a party at night for all of my friends. I was pretty happy that the Cup was gone by midnight, I was just so tired (laughs). But you know, all the other people that helped me get the chance to see the Cup, so that was really important."
Rutta had jokingly said that dumplings are the one thing he can't live without, but he also loves the way bread is made back home. He eats a lot of it when he's there for the summer, and then recreates it here in the States from time to time throughout the course of a season.
"The bread here is so much different, it's so much sweeter. I don't really like it. So I don't really eat bread during the season because I just don't like the taste. But my teammate in Tampa, Ondrej Palat, he's big into cooking. So he gave me a simple recipe on how to make an artisan bread. So from time to time - like it's not on a daily or weekly basis - but several times a year, I will make bread. Overall, the process takes four to eight hours."
Rutta also likes cards, but not the same game that the others play on the team plane.
"It started when I was a kid, I was playing this game called Magic: The Gathering. I kind of left it, then I picked it back up around four or five years ago. It's just something that I like to do in my off time. I can shut off and nerd out, kind of. When I mention it, people are surprised and they're smiling. It's something that I like. Everybody likes movies or playing video games, so I feel like this is something different, and I like that."
However, if Rutta is going to watch TV, one of his go-to's is The Office. "That's why we're good friends," his locker stallmate Casey DeSmith said with a smile.
"I can have that show just in the background running. I think I've seen it cover to cover like, I don't know, 10 times," Rutta said. "I would come home after practice and just turn on the TV, and The Office is going to be there then, and it's probably still gonna be there by the time we cook dinner. I like that show a lot."
Finally, when I asked Rutta, "what is something people might not know about you," he had an unexpected and delightful answer.
"When I was like 7 or 8 years old in elementary school, I remember the first couple of years, my mom kind of forced me to take knitting lessons. Knitting is with the needles, and then you have a tool with a hook. The pattern, it's thicker. I remember back in the day when the hacky sack was really popular, I knitted myself a hacky sack. I think I stuffed it with rice or something. It didn't look good (laughs). I remember that I thought it was going to look cool with a lot of colors. But it was just kind of like when you have Play-Doh and you play with it too much. It was just kind of a brownish, ugly color."